All this did W. W. conscientiously do, and if there was delay in bringing Tintinnabulum to heel the fault was not that of Neil, but of inferior youths who used to substitute cards inscribed “Honorificabilitudinitatibus,” “Porringer,” “Xylobalsamum,” “Beelzebobulus,” and other likely words.
Eventually he achieved; a hard-won ribbon for his benefactor whom we are about to call Neil for the last time.
There was a feeling among those who had betted on the result that it should be celebrated in no uncertain manner, and a dinner with speeches not being feasible (though undoubtedly he would have liked it), he was re-christened Tintinnabulum, and the name stuck.
So Tintinnabulum let it be henceforth in these wandering pages. Neil the disinherited may be pictured pattering back to me on his naked soles and knocking me up in the night.
“Neil,” I cry (in dressing gown and a candle), “what has happened? Have you run away from school?”
“Rather not,” says the plaintive ghost, shivering closer to the fire, “I was kicked out.”
“By your tutor?” I ask blanching.
“No, by Tintinnabulum. He is becoming such a swell among the juniors that he despises me and the old times. And now he has kicked me out.”
“Drink this hot milk, Neil, and tell me more. What are those articles you are hugging beneath your pyjamas?”
“They are the Bruiser Belt and the score against Juddy’s. He threw them out after me.”