“What can I do to amuse you, Babe?” he said. “I feel that it is the duty of all your friends to distract your thoughts from all subjects for the next two days. Shall I play cards with you--you shall teach me--or shall we talk about the Epsom meeting, or the A.D.C.? I suppose you are going to act in the May week? Why not act _Hamlet_, and we will persuade Longridge to be Ophelia. There is something sublimely inconsequent in the way Ophelia distributes artificial flowers to the company which reminds me of Longridge in his soberer moments. I have been very much tried by Longridge to-night. He asked me to help him to sing glees in the Roundabout. Can you imagine Longridge and me sitting side by side in the Roundabout singing “Three Blind Mice?” I could imagine it so vividly that I didn’t go.” The Babe laughed. “You can give me whisky and soda, and then I shall go to bed. It is twelve, and I must practise being dressed and breakfasted by nine. Does it require much practice?” “I should think about twenty minutes every morning. What is the use of doing a thing you have got to do, before you have got to do it? It is like cutting yourself with a knife to accustom yourself to a surgical operation.” “There are points of similarity,” said the Babe. “I shall go to bed now for all that, as soon as I’ve drunk this.” XXIII.--THE LISTS. List, O list. SHAKESPEARE. The Babe and Reggie were sitting outside the pavilion at Fenner’s watching the University against the gentlemen of England, who as the Babe said, so far from sitting at home at ease were running out to Feltham’s slow bowling and getting caught and stumped, with very enjoyable frequency. The cricket was a delightful mixture of a fine bowling performance and very hard hitting, which to the uneducated spectator is perhaps the most lively of all to watch. Feltham had in fact, from the Babe’s point of view, just sent down the ideal over. The first ball was hit out of the ground for six, the second bowled the hitter round his legs. The third ball was hit by the incomer for four, and the fourth for four. The fifth ball he also attempted to hit as hard as he could to square leg, and he was caught at point, in the manner of a catch at the wicket. The Babe tilted his hat over his eyes, and gave a happy little sigh. “Reggie, the tripos is the secret of life,” he said. “If you want to get a real feeling of leisure and independence, a feeling that you have been told privately by the archangels to amuse yourself and do nothing whatever else, go in for the tripos, or rather wait till you come out. I suppose that considering my years I have wasted more time than most people, and I thought I knew what it felt like. But I didn’t. I had no idea how godlike it is to do nothing. To have breakfast, and feel that it won’t be lunch-time for four hours, and after that to have the whole afternoon before you.” “When are the lists out?”