I believe it was the fluent use of the unknown tongue which at once allayed any mistrust I might have felt of my new acquaintances; however that may be, there was something so imposing in the high-sounding syllables that I yielded at once, and followed them into another and more remote quadrangle.
Here they stopped under a window, while one gave a loud whistle with his fingers to his lips; the sash was immediately thrown up, and a handsome, merry-looking face protruded. "Eh!--what!--Taylor and Ward," cried he, "what's going on?"
"Come down, Burton; here's a youth for matriculation," cried the younger.
"All right," cried the other. "There are eight of us here at breakfast;" and disappearing from the window, he speedily descended to the court, followed by a number of others, who gravely saluted me with a deep bow, and solemnly welcomed me within the classic precincts of old Trinity.
"Domine--what's his name?" said the young gentleman called Burton.
"Cregan, sir," replied I, already flattered by the attentions I was receiving,--"Con Cregan, sir."
"Well, Domine Cregan, come along with us, and never put faith in a junior sophister. You know what a junior sophister is, I trust?"
"A junior sophister, Mr. Cregan, is one who, being in 'Locke' all day, is very often locked out all night, and who observes the two rubrics of the statute '_de vigilantibus et lucentibus_,' by extinguishing both lamps and watchmen."
"Confound your pedantry!" broke in Burton; "a junior soph, is a man in his ninth examination."
"A credit to his parents, but a debtor to his tailor," broke in a third.
"Seldom at Greek lecture, but no fellow commoner at the Currah," lisped out Taylor; and by this time we had reached a narrow lane, flanked on one side by a tall building of gloomy exterior, and on the other by an angle of the square.
"Here we are, Mr. Cregan; as the poet says, 'this is the place, the centre of the wood.'"
"Gentlemen sponsors, to your functions!" Scarce were the words out, when I was seized by above half a dozen pair of strong hands; my legs were suddenly jerked upwards, and, notwithstanding my attempts to resist, I was borne along for some yards at a brisk pace. I was already about to forbear my struggles, and suffer them to play their--as I deemed it--harmless joke in quiet, when straight in front of me I saw an enormous pump, at which, and by a double handle, Burton and another were working away like sailors on a wreck; throwing forth above a yard off, a jet of water almost enough to turn a mill.