It was natural that he should write, with an almost uncanny facility, a sketch, daring, skilful, and precocious enough to stand out amidst this dead level of the commonplace. He at once made a mark which exaggerated his powers, judged only by comparison with much that was colourless and bloodless and vapid and weak. As a sure result, having caught the eye of the others, and hearing himself quoted, he wrote again; and by the greatest misfortune and not in the least realizing that he was stirring the most offensive of mud in the otherwise healthy stream of the life of the schools, he wrote a satiric sketch on the Greek friendship of two notorious youths, that sent spluttering laughter through the halls and common-rooms, and made the position of the two young nobles at the university wholly untenable. The laughter that greeted _The Eton Marriage_ was not run down when Horace Malahide followed with a satiric newspaper report of the divorce of the two youths, in which dons were solemnly trotted out as chaperons and society beauties and lawyers and officers of the court; whilst a ridiculous series of questions and answers, in examination and cross examination, aired the foibles and cranks and eccentricities and confirmed waggeries of the more pronounced local celebrities. Written as a mere whimsical squib on the seemingly ill-assorted friendship of a burly athletic youth for a dandified effeminate lordling of almost womanly beauty and æsthetic pretensions, the squib burst and discovered an awful and ugly state of affairs. To none did it bring more startling illumination than to the makers of the squib. Both Noll and Horace were staggered at the scandals their somewhat tasteless fooling disclosed. There was much hushing up to be done. The two young nobles would soon be assisting to govern the country; and they must be saved--thus the tradition worked. They found life at the university wholly impossible, and retired to the House of Lords--to their peers, so runs the quaint phrase. Noll and Horace hammered out the business, and came to the conclusion that a certain lack of good-taste on their own part had cost their beloved university a very ugly blow; they withdrew their names at the hint of the solemn faces of their masters and superiors who ruled over them, and gave their farewell reception. They purged their contempt in tea. Noll, in a fit of retrenchment, said it must be tea; having discovered that he had run through his whole three years’ allowances. Horace, always shy of displaying his wealth, on the theory that it was against good taste in the newly enriched, supported the decision for economy and tea--and ordered the most exquisite Limoges service for the solemnities.