“Eh! hum!” said the dean, eyeing the brown jean doubtingly. “I have heard of such things. Horrid puppies men are now. Never dreamt of such things in my younger days; but then, sir, we were not allowed to wear white trousers, and waistcoats of I don’t know what colours; we were made to attend to the statutes—‘Nigri aut subfusci,’ sir. Ah! times are changed—times are changed, indeed! And do you mean to say, sir, you have a friend, a member of this university, who wears such things as these?”
I might have got clear off, if it had not been for that rascal Simmons. I saw him give the dean a look, and an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
“But I don’t think, sir,” resumed he, “these can be a man’s stays—eh, Simmons?” Simmons looked diligently at his toes. “No,” said the dean, investigating the unhappy garment more closely—“no; I fear, Simmons, these are female stays!”
The conscientious Simmons made no sign.
“I don’t know, sir,” said I, as he looked from Simmons to me. “I don’t wear stays, and I know nothing about them. If Simmons were to fetch a pair of Mrs Simmons’s, sir,” resumed I, “you could compare them.”
Mrs Simmons’s figure resembled a sack of flour, with a string round it; and if she did wear the articles in question, they must have been of a pattern almost unique—made to order.
“Sir,” said the dean, “your flippancy is unbecoming. I shall not pursue this investigation any further; but I am bound to tell you, sir, this circumstance is suspicious—very suspicious.” I could not resist a smile for the life of me. “And doubly suspicious, sir, in your case. The eyes of the college are upon you, sir.” He was evidently losing his temper, so I bowed profoundly, and he grew more irate. “Ever since, sir, that atrocious business of the frogs, though the college authorities failed in discovering the guilty parties, there are some individuals, sir, whose conduct is watched attentively. Good morning, sir.”
The “business of the frogs,” to which the dean so rancorously alluded, had, indeed, caused some consternation to the fellows of ——. There had been a marvellous story going the round of the papers, of a shower of the inelegant reptiles in question having fallen in some part of the kingdom. Old women were muttering prophecies, and wise men acknowledged themselves puzzled. The Ashmolean Society had sat in conclave upon it, and accounted so satisfactorily for the occurrence, that the only wonder seemed to be that we had not a shower of frogs, or some equally agreeable visitors, every rainy morning. Now, every one who has strolled round Christ-Church meadows on a warm evening, especially after rain, must have been greeted at intervals by a whole gamut of croaks; and if he had the curiosity to peer into the green ditches as he passed along, he might catch a glimpse of the heads of the performers. Well, the joint reflections of myself and an ingenious friend, who were studying this branch of zoology while waiting for the coming up of the boats one night, tended to the conclusion, that a very successful imitation of the late “Extraordinary Phenomenon” might be got up for the edification of the scientific in our own college. Animals of all kinds find dealers and purchasers in Oxford. Curs of lowest degree have their prices. Rats, being necessary in the education of terriers, come rather expensive. A polecat—even with three legs only—will command a fancy price. Sparrows, larks, and other small birds, are retailed by the dozen on Cowley Marsh to gentlemen undergraduates who are aspiring to the pigeon-trap. But as yet there had been no demand for frogs, and there was quite a glut of them in the market. They were cheap accordingly; for a shilling a-hundred we found that we might inflict the second plague of Egypt upon the whole university. The next evening, two hampers, containing, as our purveyor assured us, “very prime ’uns,” arrived at my rooms “from Mr S——, the wine merchant;” and by daylight on the following morning were judiciously distributed throughout all the comeatable premises within the college walls. When I awoke the next morning, I heard voices in earnest conversation under my window, and looked out with no little curiosity. The frogs had evidently produced a sensation. The bursar, disturbed apparently from his early breakfast, stood robed in an ancient dressing-gown, with the Times in his hand, on which he was balancing a frog as yellow as himself. The dean, in cap and surplice, on his way from chapel, was eagerly listening to the account which one of the scouts was giving him of the first discovery of the intruders.
“Me and my missis, sir,” quoth John, “was a-coming into college when it was hardly to say daylight, when she, as I reckon, sets foot upon one of ’em, and was like to have been back’ards with a set of breakfast chiney, as she was a-bringing in for one of the fresh gentlemen. She scritches out, in course, and I looks down, and then I sees two or three a-’oppin about; but I didn’t take much notice till I gets to the thoroughfare, when there was a whole row on ’em a-trying to climb up the bottom step; and then I calls Solomon the porter, and”——
Here I left my window, and, making a hasty toilet, joined a group of undergraduates, who were now collecting round the dean and bursar. I cast my eyes round the quadrangle, and was delighted with the success of our labours. There had been a heavy shower in the night, and the frogs were as lively as they could be on so ungenial a location as a gravelled court. In every corner was a goodly cluster, who were making ladders of each other’s backs, as if determined to scale the college walls. Some, of more retiring disposition, were endeavouring to force themselves into crevices, and hiding their heads behind projections to escape the gaze of academic eyes; while a few active spirits seemed to be hopping a sweepstakes right for the common-room door. Just as I made my appearance, the Principal came out of the door of his lodgings, with another of the fellows, having evidently been summoned to assist at the consultation. Good old soul! his study of zoology had been chiefly confined to the class edibles, and a shower of frogs, authenticated upon the oaths of the whole Convocation, would not have been half so interesting to him as an importation of turtle. However, to do him justice, he put on his spectacles, and looked as scientific as anybody. After due examination of the specimen of the genus Rana which the bursar still held in captivity, and pronouncing a unanimous opinion, that, come from where he would, he was a bona fide frog, with nothing supernatural about him, the conclave proceeded round the quadrangle, calculating the numbers, and conjecturing the probable origin of these strange visitors. Equally curious, if not equally scientific, were the undergraduates who followed them; for, having strictly kept our own secret, my friend and myself were the only parties who could solve the mystery; and though many suspected that the frogs were unwilling emigrants, none knew to whom they were indebted for their introduction to college. The collected wisdom of the dons soon decided that a shower of full-grown frogs was a novelty even in the extraordinary occurrences of newspapers; and as not even a single individual croaker was to be discovered outside the walls of ——, it became evident that the whole affair was, as the dean described it, “another of those outrages upon academic discipline, which were as senseless as they were disgraceful.”