"I know that tale, it's a chestnut; I can't remember it, but Nero behaved like a beast to a lot of Jews who came to see him in Rome. The Warden oughtn't to tell old tales and then chuckle over them; besides, Nero was a brute."
"I don't think that would make any difference to the Warden. He terrifies me; I daren't say anything because I am sure he would remember that it was a stupid thing to say. I felt as if I was a convict, and that if I spoke I should give myself away. I can tell you it was something awful, and for all I know he may have expected me to say something."
"Probably not," I replied; "I should think he hears far too many people jawing. I hope he makes me feel like a convict, and then I shall behave myself all right, but a silence at a meal gives me fits."
"Miss Davenport is never silent," Murray asserted. "If she can talk about pork, you may guess she has plenty to say. The Warden looks at her in a forgiving sort of way--as if he knows she is talking rot, but can't help herself."
"They must be a funny pair. You don't think I shall laugh, do you?" I asked.
"I didn't feel like laughing. I never thought of it in that way, but it couldn't strike you as being funny while you are there."
"I don't know," I said; "I think I had better be ill on Tuesday." But then I remembered I had got to play footer, and I chucked the card over to Murray.
"I've got to play in this thing, too. The Warden kicks you out about two, so it will be all right. You simply must go. Where have you been to this afternoon?"
"I walked to Sampford with Foster, and we had a row there with two men, not much of a row. I must go and see Ward." I jumped up, but the chapel bell began to ring, and I had to postpone seeing him.
"I am all behind with my chapels and roll-calls," I said to Murray; "this will be my twenty-first, and five weeks of the term have gone."
"I kept six chapels last week," Murray answered; "you will have to go hard to keep nineteen in three weeks."
"I mean doing it and getting up very early in the morning. I am going to reform," and I left him at the chapel door, for he, being a scholar, sat in the seats behind all of us who were commoners or exhibitioners.
After chapel, at which the Regius Professor of Divinity preached and told us that Sunday luncheon parties were very wrong, I seized Ward and bore him off to his rooms, where we found Dennison sitting by the fire with his legs stuck up on the mantelpiece. I wanted to see Ward alone, but Dennison had been at Sampford, so he did not matter much, though Ward with Dennison never seemed to be quite the same as he was without him.