This was agreed to, and after much scuffling with greatcoats and scarves the guests tramped off down the stairs and out into the rainy quad. Forbes could hear them, a minute later, thundering with their heels on the huge iron-studded college gate as they waited for the porter to let them out. The room was foul with smoke, and he opened a window over the gardens letting in a gush of chill sweet air and rain. Through the darkness he could hear many chimes, counting eleven. He looked wearily at the scribbled notes for his essay on Danton and Robespierre: then shrugged his shoulders and went to bed. III By the time that Carter and King had written their chapters and read them aloud, the Scorpions were all frankly adorers of Kathleen; by midterm she had become an obsession. Eric Twiston and Bob Graham, “doing a Cornstalk” (as walking on Cornmarket Street is elegantly termed) were wont to dub any really delightful girl they saw as “a Kathleen sort of person.” At the annual dinner of the club, which took place in a private dining room at the “Clarry” (the Clarendon Hotel) in February, Forbes was called upon to respond to the toast “The Real Kathleen.” His voice, tremulous with emotion and absinthe frappe, nearly failed him; but he managed to stammer a few phrases which, thought at the time to be extemporaneous, called forth loud applause; but it was found later that he had jotted them down on the tablecloth during the soup and fish courses. “Fellow Scorpers,” he said, “I mean you chaps, look here, I'm not much at this dispatch-box business, but--hem--I want to say that I regard Kathleen with feelings of iridescent emotion. I feel sure that she is a pronounced brunette and that the Blue Flapper we all used to see at the East Ocker is nowhere. I've been playing lackers (lacrosse) this term and I give you my word that when I've been bloody well done in and had an absolute needle of funk I had only to think of Kathleen to buck me up. Hem. Now gentlemen, you may think I'm drunk (loud cries of _No_!) but I want to say in truth and soberness that any man who thinks he's got Kathleen for bondwoman--hem--has me to reckon with!” The applause at this speech was so immoderate that a party of Boston ladies dining with a Chautauqua lecturer in the Clarendon's main dining room, shuddered and began looking up time-tables to Stratford.