When down from their laps flops the out-spread book,

But consume night’s oil instead.

Yet I noticed, like a flowering shrub

A bloom in a desert, one striking grace:

They might “screw” like mad when afloat in a “tub,”

And never get up the ghost of a pace,

But they had a “Browning Club”!

So, when one waxed ill, it did not seem strange

That the Lady Principal sighed, and said,

“A stoppage of work I must arrange;