“We’ll give the three of you a dormitory lickin’. You always jaw at us as if you were prefects,” cried one. “Oh, no, you won’t,” said Stalky, “because you know that if you did you’d get the worst of it sooner or later. _We_ aren’t in any hurry. _We_ can afford to wait for our little revenges. You’ve made howlin’ asses of yourselves, and just as soon as King gets hold of your precious resolutions to-morrow you’ll find that out. If you aren’t sick an’ sorry by to-morrow night, I’ll--I’ll eat my hat.” But or ever the dinner-bell rang the next day Prout’s were sadly aware of their error. King received stray members of that house with an exaggerated attitude of fear. Did they purpose to cause him to be dismissed from the College by unanimous resolution? What were their views concerning the government of the school, that he might hasten to give effect to them? he would not offend them for worlds; but he feared--he sadly feared--that his own house, who did not pass resolutions (but washed), might somewhat deride. King was a happy man, and his house, basking in the favor of his smile, made that afternoon a long penance to the misled Prouts. And Prout himself, with a dull and lowering visage, tried to think out the rights and wrongs of it all, only plunging deeper into bewilderment. Why should his house be called “Stinkers”? Truly, it was a small thing, but he had been trained to believe that straws show which way the wind blows, and that there is no smoke without fire. He approached King in Common-room with a sense of injustice, but King was pleased to be full of airy persiflage that tide, and brilliantly danced dialectical rings round Prout. “Now,” said Stalky at bedtime, making pilgrimage through the dormitories before the prefects came by, “_now_ what have you got to say for yourselves? Foster, Carton, Finch, Longbridge, Marlin, Brett! I heard you chaps catchin’ it from King--he made hay of you--an’ all you could do was to wriggle an’ grin an’ say, ‘Yes, sir,’ an’ ‘No, sir,’ an’ ‘Oh, sir,’ an’ ‘Please, sir’! You an’ your resolution! Urh!” “Oh, shut up, Stalky.” “Not a bit of it. You’re a gaudy lot of resolutionists, you are! You’ve made a sweet mess of it. Perhaps you’ll have the decency to leave us alone next time.” Here the house grew angry, and in many voices pointed out how this blunder would never have come to pass if Number Five study had helped them from the first. “But you chaps are so beastly conceited, an’--an’ you swaggered into the meetin’ as if we were a lot of idiots,” growled Orrin of the resolution. “That’s precisely what you _are_! That’s what we’ve been tryin’ to hammer into your thick heads all this time,” said Stalky. “Never mind, we’ll forgive you. Cheer up. You can’t help bein’ asses, you know,” and, the enemy’s flank deftly turned, Stalky hopped into bed.