An Unsavoury Interlude
It was a maiden aunt of Stalky who sent him both books, with the inscription, 'To dearest Artie, on his sixteenth birthday'; it was M'Turk who ordered their hypothecation; and it was Beetle, returned from Bideford, who flung them on the window-sill of Number Five study with news that Bastable would advance but ninepence on the two; Eric; or, Little by Little, being almost as great a drug as St. Winifred's. 'An' I don't think much of your aunt. We're nearly out of cartridges, too—Artie, dear.'
Whereupon Stalky rose up to grapple with him, but M'Turk sat on Stalky's head, calling him a 'pure-minded boy' till peace was declared. As they were grievously in arrears with a Latin prose, as it was a blazing July afternoon, and as they ought to have been at a house cricket-match, they began to renew their acquaintance, intimate and unholy, with the volumes.
'Here we are!' said M'Turk. '"Corporal punishment produced on Eric the worst effects. He burned not with remorse or regret"—make a note o' that, Beetle—"but with shame and violent
