'What had I better do?' 'We had better get hold of Amy first of all,' said Tip, referring any

difficulty to her as a matter of course. 'I would rather walk about all night--it's not much to do--than give

that trouble.' 'You needn't do that, if you don't mind paying for a bed. If you don't

mind paying, they'll make you up one on the Snuggery table, under the

circumstances. If you'll come along, I'll introduce you there.'

As they passed down the yard, Arthur looked up at the window of the room

he had lately left, where the light was still burning. 'Yes, sir,' said

Tip, following his glance. 'That's the governor's. She'll sit with him

for another hour reading yesterday's paper to him, or something of that

sort; and then she'll come out like a little ghost, and vanish away

without a sound.' 'I don't understand you.'

'The governor sleeps up in the room, and she has a lodging at the

turnkey's. First house there,' said Tip, pointing out the doorway into

which she had retired. 'First house, sky parlour. She pays twice as much

for it as she would for one twice as good outside. But she stands by the

governor, poor dear girl, day and night.'

This brought them to the tavern-establishment at the upper end of the

prison, where the collegians had just vacated their social evening club.

The apartment on the ground-floor in which it was held, was the Snuggery

in question; the presidential tribune of the chairman, the pewter-pots,

glasses, pipes, tobacco-ashes, and general flavour of members, were

still as that convivial institution had left them on its adjournment.

The Snuggery had two of the qualities popularly held to be essential to

grog for ladies, in respect that it was hot and strong; but in the third

point of analogy, requiring plenty of it, the Snuggery was defective;

being but a cooped-up apartment.

The unaccustomed visitor from outside, naturally assumed everybody here

to be prisoners--landlord, waiter, barmaid, potboy, and all. Whether

they were or not, did not appear; but they all had a weedy look. The

keeper of a chandler's shop in a front parlour, who took in gentlemen

boarders, lent his assistance in making the bed. He had been a tailor in

his time, and had kept a phaeton, he said. He boasted that he stood up

litigiously for the interests of the college; and he had undefined and

undefinable ideas that the marshal intercepted a 'Fund,' which ought to

come to the collegians. He liked to believe this, and always impressed

the shadowy grievance on new-comers and strangers; though he could not,

for his life, have explained what Fund he meant, or how the notion had

got rooted in his soul.




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