“I’m all right,” he protested. “I swear I heard a lot what Turkey said. Shut up! Oh, shut up! Do shut up, you putrid asses.” Beetle was speaking from the fender, his head between Turkey’s knees, and Stalky largely over the rest of him.
“What’s the metre of the beastly thing?” McTurk waved his Horace. “Look it up, Stalky. Twelfth of the Third.”
“Ionicum a minore,” Stalky reported, closing his book in turn. “Don’t let him forget it”; and Turkey’s Horace marked the metre on Beetle’s skull, with special attention to elisions. It hurt.
“Miserar’ est neq’ amori dare ludum neque dulci
Mala vino laver’ aut ex——”
“Got it? You liar! You’ve no ear at all! Chorus, Stalky!”
Both Horaces strove to impart the measure, which was altogether different from its accompaniment. Presently Howell dashed in from his study below.
“Look out! If you make this infernal din we’ll have some one up the staircase in a sec.”
“We’re teachin’ Beetle Horace. He was goin’ to burble us some muck he’d read,” the tutors explained.
“’Twasn’t muck! It was about those Tom-a-Bedlams in Lear.”