And at that very hour, Number Five Study--“prep” thrown to the winds--were toiling inspiredly at a Tar Baby made up of Beetle’s sweater, and half-a-dozen lavatory-towels; a condemned cretonne curtain and ditto baize table-cloth for “natal stuffin’”; an ancient, but air-tight puntabout-ball for the head; all three play-box ropes for bindings; and most of Richard’s weekly blacking allowance for Prout’s House’s boots to give tone to the whole. “Gummy!” said Beetle when their curtain-pole had been taken down and Tar Baby hitched to the end of it by a loop in its voluptuous back. “It looks pretty average indecent, somehow.” “You can use it this way, too,” Turkey demonstrated, handling the curtain-pole like a flail. “Now, shove it in the fireplace to dry an’ we’ll wash up.” “But--but,” said Stalky, fascinated by the unspeakable front and behind of the black and bulging horror. “How _come_ he lookee so hellish?” “Dead easy! If you do anything with your whole heart, Ruskin says, you always pull off something dam’-fine. Brer Terrapin’s only a natural animal; but Tar Baby’s Art,” McTurk explained. “I see! ‘If you’re anxious for to shine in the high æsthetic line.’ Well, Tar Baby’s the filthiest thing _I_’ve ever seen in my life,” Stalky concluded. “King’ll be rabid.” The United idolaters set forth, side by side, at five o’clock next afternoon; Brer Terrapin, wide awake, and swimming hard into nothing; Tar Baby lurching from side to side with a lascivious abandon that made Foxy, the School Sergeant, taking defaulters’ drill in the Corridor, squawk like an outraged hen. And when they ceremoniously saluted each other, like aristocratic heads on revolutionary pikes, it beat the previous day’s performance out of sight and mind. The very fags, offered up, till the bottoms of the paper-baskets carried away, as heave-offerings before them, fell over each other for the honour; and House by House, when the news spread, dropped its doings, and followed the Mysteries--not without song. Some say it was a fag of Prout’s who appealed for rescue from Brer Terrapin to Tar Baby; others, that the introits to the respective creeds (“Ingle-go-jang”--“Ti-yi-Tungalee!”) carried in themselves the seeds of dissent. At any rate, the cleavage developed as swiftly as in a new religion, and by tea-time when they were fairly hoarse, the rolling world was rent to the death between Ingles _versus_ Tungles, and Brer Terrapin had swept out Number Eleven form-room to the War-cry: “Here I come a-bulgin’ and a-bilin’.” Prep stopped further developments, but they agreed that, as a recreation for wet autumn evenings, the jape was unequalled, and called for its repetition on Saturday. That was a brilliant evening, too. Both sides went into prayers practically re-dressing themselves. There was a smell of singed fag down the lines and a watery eye or so; but nothing to which the most fastidious could have objected. The Reverend John hinted something about roof-lifting noises.