"If you please," said the stranger, "I am James Pucker. I came to enter, sir, for my matriculation examination, and I wish to see the gentleman who will examine me."
"Then you've come to the proper quarter, young man," said Mr. Bouncer. "Here is Mr. Pluckem," turning to Mr. Verdant Green, "the junior examiner."
Mr. Verdant Green took his cue with astonishing aptitude and glared through his glasses at the trembling, blushing Mr. Pucker.
"And here," continued Mr. Bouncer, pointing to Mr. Fosbrooke, who was coming up the street, "is the gentleman who will assist Mr. Pluckem in examining you."
"It will be extremely inconvenient to me to examine you now," said Mr. Fosbrooke; "but, as you probably wish to return home as soon as possible, I will endeavour to conclude the business at once. Mr. Bouncer, will you have the goodness to bring this young gentleman to my rooms?"
Leaving Mr. Pucker to express his thanks for this great kindness to Mr. Bouncer, who whiled away the time by telling him terrible stories about the matriculation ordeal, Mr. Verdant Green and Fosbrooke ran upstairs, and spread a newspaper over a heap of pipes and pewter pots and bottles of ale, and prepared a table with pen, ink, and scribble-paper. Soon afterwards, Mr. Bouncer led in the unsuspecting victim.
"Take a seat, sir," said Mr. Fosbrooke, gravely. And Mr. Pucker put his hat on the ground, and sat down at the table in a state of blushing nervousness. "Have you been at a public school?"
"Yes, sir," stammered the victim; "a very public one, sir. It was a boarding school, sir. I was a day boy, sir, and in the first class."
"First class of an uncommon slow train!" muttered Mr. Bouncer.
"Now, sir," continued Mr. Fosbrooke, "let us see what your Latin writing is like. Have the goodness to turn what I have written into Latin; and be very careful," added Mr. Fosbrooke sternly, "be very careful that it is good Latin!" And he handed Mr. Pucker a sheet of paper, on which he had scribbled the following:
"To be turned into Latin after the Manner of the Animals of Tacitus: She went into the garden to cut a cabbage to make an apple-pie. Just then a great she-bear, coming down the street, poked its nose into the shop window. 'What! No soap? Bosh!' So he died, and she (very imprudently) married the barber. And there were present at the wedding the Joblillies, and the Piccannies, and the Gobelites, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the little button on top. So they all set to playing catch-who-catch-can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots."
It was well for the purposes of the hoaxers that Mr. Pucker's trepidation prevented him from making a calm perusal of the paper; he was nervously doing his best to turn the nonsensical English word by word into equally nonsensical Latin, when his limited powers of Latin writing were brought to a full stop by the untranslatable word "bosh." As he could make nothing of this, he gazed appealingly at the benignant features of Mr. Verdant Green. The appealing gaze was answered by our hero ordering Mr. Pucker to hand in his paper, and reply to the questions on history and Euclid. Mr. Pucker took the two papers of questions, and read as follows:
HISTORY.
"1. Show the strong presumption there is, that Nox was the god of battles.
"2. In what way were the shades on the banks of the Styx supplied with spirits?
"3. Give a brief account of the Roman emperors who visited the United States, and state what they did there.
EUCLID.
"1. Show the fallacy of defining an angle, as a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
"2. If a freshman A have any mouth x and a bottle of wine y, show how many applications of x to y will place y+y before A.
"3. Find the value of a 'bob,' a 'tanner,' a 'joey,' a 'tizzy,' a 'poney,' and a 'monkey.'
"4. If seven horses eat twenty-five acres of grass in three days, what will be their condition on the fourth day? Prove this by practice."
Mr. Pucker did not know what to make of such extraordinary and unexpected questions. He blushed, tried to write, fingered his curls, and then gave himself over to despair; whereupon Mr. Bouncer was seized with an immoderate fit of laughter, which brought the farce almost to an end.
"I'm afraid, young gentleman," said Mr. Bouncer, "that your learning is not yet up to the Brazenface standard. But we will give you one more chance to retrieve yourself. We will try a little vivâ voce, Mr. Pucker. If a coach-wheel 6 inches in diameter and 5 inches in circumference makes 240 revolutions in a second, how many men will it take to do the same piece of work in ten days?"
Mr. Pucker grew redder and hotter than before, and gasped like a fish out of water.
"I see you will not do for us yet awhile," said his tormentor, "and we are therefore under the painful necessity of rejecting you. I should advise you to read hard for another twelve months, and try to master those subjects in which you have now failed."
Disregarding poor Mr. Pucker's entreaties to matriculate him this once for the sake of his mother, when he would read very hard--indeed he would--Mr. Fosbrooke turned to Mr. Bouncer and gave him some private instructions, and Mr. Verdant Green immediately disappeared in search of his scout, Filcher. Five minutes afterwards, as the dejected Mr. Pucker was crawling out of the quad, Filcher came and led him back to the rooms of Mr. Slowcoach, the real examining tutor.
"But I have been examined," Mr. Pucker kept on saying dejectedly. "I have been examined, and they rejected me."
"I think it was an 'oax, sir," said Filcher.
"A what!" stammered Mr. Pucker.
"A 'oax--a sell," said the scout. "Those two gents has been 'aving a little game with you, sir. They often does it with fresh parties like you, sir, that seem fresh and hinnocent like."
Mr. Pucker was immensely relieved at this news, and at once went to Mr. Slowcoach, who, after an examination of twenty minutes, passed him. But Filcher was alarmed at the joyful way in which he rushed out of the tutor's room.
"You didn't tell 'im about the 'oax, sir, did yer?" asked the scout anxiously.
"Not a word," said the radiant Mr. Pucker.
"Then you're a trump, sir!" said Filcher. "And Mr. Verdant Green's compliments to yer, sir, and will you come up to his rooms and take a glass of wine with him, sir?"
It need hardly be said that the blushing Mr. Pucker passed a very pleasant evening with his new friends, and that Mr. Verdant Green was very proud of having got so far out of the freshman's stage of existence as to take part in one of the most successful hoaxes in the history of Oxford.
III.--Town and Gown
Mr. Verdant Green, Mr. Charles Larkyns, and a throng of their acquaintances were sitting in Mr. Bouncer's rooms, on the evening of November 5, when a knock at the oak was heard; and as Mr. Bouncer roared out, "Come in!" the knocker entered. Opening the door, and striking into an attitude, he exclaimed in a theatrical tone and manner:
"Scene, Mr. Bouncer's rooms in Brazenface; in the centre a table, at which a party are drinking log-juice, and smoking cabbage leaves. Door, left, third entrance. Enter the Putney Pet. Slow music; lights half down."
Even Mr. Verdant Green did not require to be told the profession of the Putney Pet. His thick-set frame, his hard-featured, battered, hang-dog face proclaimed him a prize-fighter.
"Now for a toast, gentlemen," said Mr. Bouncer. "May the Gown give the Town a jolly good hiding!"
This was received with great applause, and the Putney Pet was dressed out in a gown and mortar-board, and the whole party then sallied out to battle. From time immemorial it has been the custom at Oxford for the town-people and the scholars to engage, at least once a year, in a wild scrimmage, and the pitched battle was now due. No doubt it was not quite fair for the men of Brazenface to bring the Putney Pet up from London for the occasion; but for some years Gown had been defeated by Town, and they were resolved to have their revenge.