"None of your chaff, Six. He had a gulp or
two, and swallowed the rest by main force."

''Don't you talk: you can swallow anything, it
seems." (Puff.)

"Well, I believe it," said one of Hardie's own
set. "Dodd doesn't know him as we do. Taff
Hardie can't bear to be beat."

When they were gone, Mrs. Dodd observed,
"Dear me! what if the young gentleman did cry
a little, it was very excusable; after such great
exertions it was disappointing, mortifying. I
pity him for one, and wish he had his mother
alive and here, to dry them."*

*Oh where, and oh where, was her Lindley Murray
gone?

"Mamma, it is you for reading us," cried
Edward, slapping his thigh. "Well, then, since you
can feel for a fellow, Hardie was a good deal cut up.
You know the university was in a manner beaten,
and he took the blame. He never cried; that
was a cracker of those fellows. But he did give
one great sob, that was all, and hung his head on
one side a moment. But then he fought out of it
directly, like a man, and there was an end of it,
or ought to have been. Hang chatterboxes!"

"And what did you say to console him,
Edward?" inquired Julia, warmly.

"What me? Console my senior, and my
Stroke? No, thank you."

At this thunderbolt of etiquette both ladies
kept their countenances—this was their
muscular feat that day—and the racing for the sculls
came on: six competitors—two Cambridge, three
Oxford, one London. The three heats furnished
but one good race, a sharp contest between a
Cambridge man and Hardie, ending in favour of
the latter; the Londoner walked away from his
opponent. Sir Imperturbable's competitor was
impetuous, and ran into him in the first hundred
yards; Sir I. consenting calmly. The umpire,
appealed to on the spot, decided that it was a
foul, Mr. Dodd being in his own water. He
walked over the course, and explained the matter
to his sister, who delivered her mind thus:

"Oh! if races are to be won by going slower
than the other, we may shine yet: only, I call it
Cheating, not Racing."

He smiled unmoved; she gave her scarf the
irony twist, and they all went to dinner. The
business recommenced with a race between a
London boat and the winner of yesterday's heat,
Cambridge. Here the truth of Edward's
remark appeared. The Cambridge boat was too
light for the men, and kept burying her nose;
the London craft, under a heavy crew, floated
like a cork. The Londoners soon found out
their advantage, and, overrating it, steered into
their opponents' water prematurely, in spite of a
warning voice from the bank. Cambridge saw,
and cracked on for a foul; and for about a
minute it was anybody's race. But the
Londoners pulled gallantly, and just scraped clear
ahead. This peril escaped, they kept their backs
straight and a clear lead to the finish;
Cambridge followed a few feet in their wake, pulling
wonderfully fast to the end, but a trifle out of
form, and much distressed.

At this both universities looked blue, their
humble aspiration being, first to beat off all the
external world, and then tackle each other for
the prize.

Just before Edward left his friends for "the
sculls," the final heat, a note was brought to
him. He ran his eye over it, and threw it open
into his sister's lap. The ladies read it. Its
writer had won a prize poem, and so now is our
time to get a hint for composition:

Dear Sir—Oxford must win something.
Suppose we go in for these sculls. You are a horse that
can stay; Silcock is hot for the lead at starting, I
hear; so I mean to work him out of wind; then
you can wait on us, and pick up the race. My head
is not well enough to-day to win, but I am good to
pump the Cockney; he is quick, but a little stale.
Yours truly,
ALFRED HARDIE

Mrs. Dodd remarked that the language was
sadly figurative; but she hoped Edward might be
successful in spite of his correspondent's style.

Julia said she did not dare hope it.  "The race
is not always to the slowest and the dearest."
This was in allusion to yesterday's "foul."

The skiffs started down at the island, and, as
they were longer coming up than the eight-oars,
she was in a fever for nearly ten minutes; at
last, near the opposite bank, up came the two
leading skiffs struggling, both men visibly
exhausted; Silcock ahead, but his rudder
overlapped by Hardie's bow; each in his own water.

"We are third," sighed Julia, and turned her
head away from the river sorrowfully; but only
for a moment, for she felt Mrs. Dodd start and
press her arm; and lo! Edward's skiff was
shooting swiftly across from their side of the
river. He was pulling just within himself, in
beautiful form, and with far more elasticity than
the other two had got left. As he passed his
mother and sister, his eye seemed to strike fire,
and he laid out all his powers, and went at the
leading skiffs hand over head. There was a yell
of astonishment and delight from both sides
of the Thames. He passed Hardie, who upon
that relaxed his speed. In thirty seconds more
he was even with Silcock; then came a keen
struggle: but the new comer was "the horse
that could stay:" he drew steadily ahead, and
the stem of his boat was in a line with Siicock's
person, when the gun fired, and a fearful roar
from the bridge, the river, and the banks,
announced that the favourite university had picked
up the sculls in the person of Dodd of Exeter.

In due course, he brought the little silver
sculls, and pinned them on his mother.

While she and Julia were telling him how proud
they were and how happy they should be, but for
their fears that he would hurt himself, beating
gentlemen ever so much older than himself, came
two Exeter men with wild looks hunting for him;
"Oh, Dodd! Hardie wants you directly."