“Send my compliments to the senior proctor,” said Drysdale, “and say I have a very particular engagement to morrow morning, which will prevent my having the pleasure of calling on him.”
“Very good, sir,” said the porter, giving a little dry chuckle, and tapping the keys against his leg; “only perhaps you wouldn't mind writing him a note, sir, as he is rather a particular gentleman.”
“Didn't he send after anyone else?” said Tom.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Jervis, sir.”
“Well, and what about him?”
“Oh, sir, Mr. Jervis! an old hand, sir. He'd been in gates long time, sir, when the marshal came.”
“The sly old beggar!” said Drysdale, “good night, porter; mind you send my message to the proctor. If he is set on seeing me to-morrow, you can say that he will find a broiled chicken and a hand at picquet in my rooms, if he likes to drop in to lunch.”
The porter looked after them for a moment, and then retired to his deep old chair in the lodge, pulled his night cap over his ears, put up his feet before the fire on a high stool, and folded his hands on his lap. “The most impidentest thing on the face of the earth is it gen'l'man-commoner in his first year,” soliloquized the little man. “'Twould ha' done that one a sight of good, now, if he'd got a good hiding in the street to-night. But he's better than most on 'em, too,” he went on; “uncommon free with his tongue, but just as free with his arf-sovereigns. Well, I'm not going to peach if the proctor don't send again in the morning. That sort's good for the college; makes things brisk; has his wine from town, and don't keep no keys. I wonder, now, if my Peter's been out a fighting? He's pretty nigh as hard to manage, is that boy, as if he was at college hisself.”
And so, muttering over his domestic and professional grievances, the small janitor composed himself to a nap. I may add, parenthetically, that his hopeful Peter, a precocious youth of seventeen, scout's boy on No. 3 staircase of St. Ambrose's College, was represented in the boot cleaning and errand line by a substitute for some days; and when he returned to duty was minus a front tooth.
“What fools we were not to stick to the Captain. I wonder what we shall get,” said Tom, who was troubled in his mind at the proctor's message, and not gifted naturally with the recklessness and contempt of authority which in Drysdale's case approached the sublime.