So Mac used to play off his wicked jokes upon Almond and myself for the reasons stated. He bored a hole through the wall at the head of our bed, and awoke us untimeously in the frosty mornings by squirting mysterious streams of water upon us. He said he had promised Almond's mother to see that he took a bath every morning, and he was going to do it. He anticipated us at our tins of sardines, and when we re-opened them we found all the tails carefully preserved in oil and sawdust. He made disgraceful caricatures of our physiognomies by falsely representing that he wished us to sit for our portraits. He perpetrated drawings upon the backs of our college exercises, mixing them with opprobrious remarks concerning our preceptors, which we did not observe till our attention was called to them upon their return by the preceptors themselves. We bore these things meekly on the whole, for that was our nature--at least mine. Occasionally the worm turned, and then a good many articles of furniture were overset; and the Misses Hope, who resided beneath us, knocked up through the ceiling with the tongs, whereupon the landlady and her daughter came in armed with the poker and a long-handled broom to promote peace. But after the affair of the squirt Almond and I took counsel, and Almond said (for Professor Jeeming Flenkin had discovered on the back of a careful drawing of an engine wheel a caricature of himself pointing with index-finger and saying, "Very smutty!") that he would stand this sort of thing no longer. So we resolved to work a sell on Mac which he would not forget to his dying day. To effect this we took our landlady and our landlady's daughter into the plot, and the matter was practically complete when Mac came home. We heard him whistling up the stairs. The engineer was drawing a cherub in Indian ink. The arts student was reading a text-book of geology. The landlady and her daughter were busy about their work in their own quarters. All was peace. The key clicked in the lock, and then the whistle stopped as Mac entered. The landlady met him at the door. She gazed anxiously and maternally at his face. She seemed surprised also, and a trifle agitated. "Dear me, Maister Mac, what's the maitter? Ye're no' lookin' weel." Mac was a little surprised, but not alarmed. "There is nothing the matter, Mrs. Christison," said he lightly. "Eh, Teena, come here," she cried to her daughter. Teena came hurriedly at her mother's call. But as she looked upon Mac the fashion of her countenance changed. "Are you not well?" she said, peering anxiously into the pupils of Mac's eyes. Such attentions are flattering, and Mac, being a squire of dames, was desirous of making the most of it. "Well, I was not feeling quite up to the mark, but I daresay it'll pass off," he said diplomatically. "You must not be working so hard. You will kill yourself one of these days." For which we hope and trust she may be forgiven, though it is a good deal to hope.