“Oh, these?” Billy allowed his feet to ramble among the volumes on the floor. “Oh, they’re just notes--History and French and things; there were no matches in my room, and I was in a hurry, so I had to bring them all. The Literature ones are there too; but they’re rather--rather--what shall I say?” He refrained delicately from saying what was the simple truth,--that his notes on all subjects were an illegible muddle, beginning nowhere--arriving nowhere. “Things come to me at such odd times,” he went on, “I just jot them down. Anyhow you won’t need notes; we merely want you to give us some idea to go by,” he fluttered his slender hand comprehensively, “an idea of literature.” “Yes,” put in Dilly, stirred by the practical common sense of the suggestion, “the examination, I think, is about literature.” “You _think_--good God, child, don’t you _know_?” Haydock mopped his forehead on the back of his arm, and stared at the two incredulously. “Oh, he’ll catch on all right,” said Billy, easily. “You see the course only came once a week, and Darnell lectures so fast that, sitting away in the back of the room as we do--” “You prefer, on the whole, to stay away entirely, or make the hour pass as rapidly as possible. Yes, yes, I understand,” interrupted Haydock, drily. He picked up one of Billy’s books marked “English 28,” and opened it at random, to a page devoted to the diagrams and scores of the “Harvard University Tit Tat Too and Cent Matching Association. Originators and Sole Proprietors, William Prescott Ware and Dilford Bancroft. Honorary member: President Eliot.” On the page following was a fragmentary list of the writers whose lives and achievements had been taken up in the course. After the name of Jane Austen, came the announcement, in parentheses, that “this woman was a man.” The startling bit of literary gossip was annotated by: “I was mistaken--it was George Eliot who was a woman.” “That almost flunked me at the hour exam,” explained Billy, diffidently. “They’re so fussy about things here.” He was looking over Haydock’s shoulder. “It would have, I think, if I hadn’t thrown a new light on the temperament of Swift.” “I’ll warrant you did,” said Haydock. “What on earth is this?” The list was followed by page after page of scrappy-looking verse. “Oh, that’s the Rhyming Road,” exclaimed Billy, not without pride. “It sums everything up and helps the memory. See now--I never can forget about that old Eliot woman as long as I live.” Haydock followed Billy’s guiding finger, and read a stanza that began:-- “Oh, heavens, oh, heavens, Miss Mary Ann Evans, Why did you change your name? But I’m on to you, Mary, You wary old fairy--” “And this one on Matthew Arnold,” continued Billy, “gives the whole man away at once--” “Matthew Arnold--he’s all right, Full of sweetness, full of light.” “And Richardson--”