“I thought I should find you at breakfast, Maynard. Give me some, like a good fellow. My fire is gone out, and I can’t find either my gyp or bed-maker, although I’ve been shouting from the window till I am as hoarse as a raven. What are you eating? Steak, and mighty nicely done too.” Their hunger once somewhat appeased, they began to talk over the events of the past night, and of the boat supper. “Do you know, Frank,” Teddy Drake said, after a pause, “that cousin of yours—Bingham—becomes more unpleasant every day. I thought last night there would have been a row half-a-dozen times. He is the most insufferable little beggar I ever came across.” Frank laughed. “Bingham does make himself disagreeable, Drake, I quite allow; but it is really all manner, he is not a bad fellow.” “I only go by what I see and hear, Frank, and I call him a cantankerous little vermin.” “It is all outside, Drake; he is a good-hearted fellow in the main.” “I don’t think it, Frank. I tell you he is a chip of the evil one.” “Without going as far as Drake,” Prescott said, smiling, “I confess, Frank, that I don’t like Bingham. It is not that he is disagreeable, although he certainly is that, but that I feel instinctively repelled by him. Frankly, Maynard, he gives me the impression of being bad hearted. He is essentially a man I could not trust.” “Oh come, Prescott,” Frank said, warmly, “that is not like you. I have known Fred for many years, and I believe him to be a very straightforward fellow. Disagreeable and cantankerous if you like, but a good fellow in the main. In his way he reminds me, although he is as straight as an arrow, of deformed people. They are generally kind-hearted, but they are often extremely sensitive. They imagine all sorts of slights where none are intended, and are not unfrequently very bitter in their remarks on those to whom nature has been more bountiful than to themselves. So with Fred; I am sure he feels it very much that he looks a mere boy, and it makes him irritable and snappish.” “I have no doubt there is a good deal in what you say, Frank; but I confess that somehow or other I distrust as much as I dislike him.” “He’s a chip of the evil one,” Teddy Drake muttered to himself, “and there are no two ways about it.” “Now, Drake,” Frank said, “help me to push the table back, and let’s have a pipe. Another fortnight and we shall be going down; now the races are over I shall be glad to be away.” “I am going to stop up and read,” Teddy Drake said, disconsolately. “My coach says that I never open a book when the men are up, and that my only chance is in the vacations, when there is nothing to do. I am afraid he’s about right; and I’ve made up my mind to stick to it. I shall run up to town and see the ‘’Varsity,’ of course, but that’s all the holidays I mean to take.”