_Corn._ Welcome home, Tulliolus, shall we have some games?
_Corn._ What is there to prevent us playing?
_Tull._ We must go over again what the master set, and commit it to memory, as he bade us.
_Corn._ I say, what are those pictures? I believe they are pictures of ants. Mother mine, Tulliolus is bringing a lot of ants and gnats painted on a writing-tablet.
_Tull._ Be quiet, you silly thing, they are letters.
_Corn._ Why is this first one rather than the next called A?
_Mother._ Why art thou Corneliola and not Tulliolus?
_Mother._ And it is just the same way with those letters. But go and play now, my boy.
_Tull._ I am putting my tablet and pencil (style) down here. If anybody disturbs them, he will be beaten by mother. Won’t he, mammy? (_mea matercula._)
_Tull._ Let us play at nuts, at throwing them in holes.
_Lent._ I have only a few nuts and those squashed and smelly.
_Sci._ Well then, we will play with the shells of nuts.
_Tull._ But what good would they be to me even if I were to win twenty? There would be no kernels in the nuts for me to eat.
_Sci._ Why, I don’t eat when I am playing. If I want to eat, I go to the mater. Nut-shells are good for making little houses to put ants into.
_Lent._ Let us play odd and even with little pins (lit. small pins for a head-dress—_acicula_).
_Tull._ How grubby and dirty they are. They are not free from fluff. Nor are they polished. Cast!
_Sci._ We are playing for trousers buttons (_astrigmenta_—lit. points).
_Lent._ I don’t want to lose mine, for if I did I should be beaten at home by my tutor.
_Tull._ What are you willing to lose then, if you are beaten?
_Lent._ Some good raps with the fingers on me.
_Mother._ What is that lying on the ground? You are spoiling all your clothes and boots on the dirtiest of the ground. Why don’t you first sweep the floor and then sit down? Bring the broom here!
_Sci._ One needle for each point in the game.
_Lent._ I have no needles. If you like I will deposit cherry-stones instead of needles.
_Tull._ Get away. Let me and you play, Scipio.
_Sci._ I will risk it—to cast my needle on luck.
_Tull._ Give me the dice in my hand, so that I may cast first. Look, I have won the stake.
_Sci._ You haven’t. For you were not playing then in serious.