“Oh, McTurk, please let me go. I don’t stink--I swear I don’t!” “Guilty conscience!” cried Beetle. “Who said you did?” “What d’you make of it?” Stalky punted the small boy into Beetle’s arms. “Snf! Snf! He does, though. I think it’s leprosy--or thrush. P’raps it’s both. Take it away.” “Indeed, Master Beetle”--King generally came to the house-door for a minute or two as the bell rang--“we are vastly indebted to you for your diagnosis, which seems to reflect almost as much credit on the natural unwholesomeness of your mind as it does upon your pitiful ignorance of the diseases of which you discourse so glibly. We will, however, test your knowledge in other directions.” That was a merry lesson, but, in his haste to scarify Beetle, King clean neglected to give him an imposition, and since at the same time he supplied him with many priceless adjectives for later use, Beetle was well content, and applied himself most seriously throughout third lesson (algebra with little Hartopp) to composing a poem entitled “The Lazar-house.” After dinner King took his house to bathe in the sea off the Pebbleridge. It was an old promise; but he wished he could have evaded it, for all Prout’s lined up by the Fives Court and cheered with intention. In his absence not less than half the school invaded the infected dormitory to draw their own conclusions. The cat had gained in the last twelve hours, but a battlefield of the fifth day could not have been so flamboyant as the spies reported. “My word, she _is_ doin’ herself proud,” said Stalky. “Did you ever smell anything like it? Ah, an’ she isn’t under White’s dormitory at all yet.” “But she will be. Give her time,” said Beetle. “She’ll twine like a giddy honeysuckle. What howlin’ Lazarites they are! No house is justified in makin’ itself a stench in the nostrils of decent--” “High-minded, pure-souled boys. _Do_ you burn with remorse and regret?” said McTurk, as they hastened to meet the house coming up from the sea. King had deserted it, so speech was unfettered. Round its front played a crowd of skirmishers--all houses mixed--flying, reforming, shrieking insults. On its tortured flanks marched the Hoplites, seniors hurling jests one after another--simple and primitive jests of the Stone Age. To these the three added themselves, dispassionately, with an air of aloofness, almost sadly. “And they look all right, too,” said Stalky. “It can’t be Rattray, can it? Rattray?” No answer. “Rattray, dear? He seems stuffy about something or other. Look here, old man, we don’t bear any malice about your sending that soap to us last week, do we? Be cheerful, Rat. You can live this down all right. I dare say it’s only a few fags. Your house is so beastly slack, though.”