“I don’t,” admitted Beverly, serenely. “He’d rather sit in his own room on a dais all day, and have Michael fan him, while three black slaves at his feet try to guess the secret of his ennui,” continued Haydock. “Own up, Bevy--aren’t you afraid of being bored?” “Why, of course,” answered Beverly. “That’s my constant fear; and you idiots sometimes make me think that it isn’t an altogether groundless one.” “To what do we owe the honour of your presence at breakfast this morning?” asked Wynne, bowing low. Beverly usually breakfasted at ten. It was then half-past eight. “To an examination in pre-Christian Hebrew literature,--nothing else I assure you.” Beverly didn’t look up from the morning paper he was trying to read. “And we’re just a little peevish at having to stay for it, instead of getting away five days earlier--aren’t we?” To this Beverly paid no attention whatever, but rang for the steward and asked him to telephone to Foster to send round Lloyd the cabman at once. It looked like rain, and Beverly’s examination that morning was over in the Museum--at least a quarter of a mile away. Billy Fields listened to the order, and then called out:-- “Oh, I say there, look out for Beverly Beverly; he’s horribly haughty this morning, ha, ha!” Billy could exaggerate Beverly’s accent, and sound startlingly like the original. He could also imitate his “Who the devil are you?” expression and his walk. These things he proceeded to do around the breakfast-table and out into the hall, until the front door slammed behind him. He lingered on the street outside in order to stand in the gutter and salute when Beverly drove away in his cab. Beverly had watched Billy’s little performance with dispassionate interest, and remarked before returning to his newspaper:-- “He’s really talented, in a singularly offensive way.” But the words sounded amiable rather than otherwise, for, on the whole, Beverly liked to be teased by the fellows. Some of them were clever at it--Billy especially. It pleased Beverly to think it was the little penalty he paid for being mature enough to know definitely what did and didn’t amuse him, and to act accordingly. He was sincere in his dislike of Class Day, and didn’t intend to go near it. He objected to having the Yard enclosed in Christmas-trees and festooned with paper lanterns,--to its “pretending to be a beer garden with Hamlet left out.” He considered it undignified to throw open the University to a rabble of women, to invite them to “kick up their heels” in Memorial Hall, and see them described in the evening papers as “Harvard’s Fair Invaders.” During breakfast, he enlarged on these views to a scornful audience that finally arose in its might, tore off his necktie, ruined his coiffure, threw him out of the club into his cab, and then retreated and locked itself in. Even this didn’t make Beverly really angry, he was used to differences of opinion followed by popular uprisings.