“‘I hate the day when first I met you all,
And this I undertake to bet you all,
One day I’ll into trouble get you all,
And down the playground steps upset you all,
And with a garden hose I’ll wet you all,
And then—’”
“Oh, look here,” said Oliver, “that’ll do. You may as well finish the thing right out at that rate.”
“Not at all, my dear fellow. It was just a sudden inspiration, you know. Don’t mention it, and you may like to get off that rhyme into another. But I say, Greenfield, we shall have a stunning paper for the first one. Tom Senior has written no end of a report of the last meeting of the Sixth Form Debating Society, quite in the parliamentary style; and Bullinger is writing a history of Saint Dominic’s, ‘gathered from the earliest sources,’ as he says, in which he’s taking off most of the Sixth. Simon is writing a love-ballad, which is sure to be fun; and Ricketts is writing a review of Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon; and Wraysford is engaged on ‘The Diary of the Sixth Form Mouse.’”
“Good!” said Oliver, “and what are you writing?”
“Oh, the leading article, you know, and the personal notes, and ‘Squeaks from Guineapigland and Tadpoleopolis,’ and some of the advertisements. Come up to my study, you and Wray, this evening after prayers, I say, and we’ll go through it.”
And off hobbled the editor of the Dominican, leaving Oliver greatly impressed with his literary talents, especially in the matter of finding rhymes for “perpetual.”
By the time he and Wraysford went in the evening to read over what had been sent in, the poem on the Guinea-pigs was complete.
They found Pembury busy over a huge sheet of paper, the size of his table.
“What on earth have you got there?” cried Wraysford.
“The Dominican, to be sure,” said Anthony, gravely.