[Fated to Be Free by Jean Ingelow]@TWC D-Link book
Fated to Be Free

CHAPTER XV
5/13

And now, peace being restored, everybody helped everybody else to the delicacies, John discreetly refraining from any inquiry as to whether this was the first midnight feast over which his son had presided, but he could not forbear to say, "I suppose your grandfather's 'tip' is to blame for this ?" "If everybody was like the Grand," remarked Crayshaw, "Tennyson never need have said-- "'Vex not thou the schoolboy's soul With thy shabby _tip_.'" "Now, Cray," said Brandon, "don't you emulate Valentine's abominable trick of quoting." "And I have often begged you two not to parody the Immortals," said John.

"The small fry you may make fun of, if you please, but let the great alone." "But he ithn't dead," reasoned Master Augustus John; "I don't call any of thoth fellowth immortal till they're dead." "It's a very bad habit," continued his father.
"And he's made me almost as bad as himself," observed Crayshaw in the softest and mildest of tones.

"Miss Christie said this very morning that there was no bearing me, and I never did it till I knew him.

I used to be so good, everybody loved me." John laughed, but was determined to say his say.
"You never can take real pleasure again in any poetry that you have mauled in that manner.

Miss Crampton was seriously annoyed when she found that you had altered the girl's songs, and made them ridiculous." The last time, in fact, that Johnnie and Crayshaw had been together, they had deprived themselves of their natural rest in order to carry out these changes; and the first time Miss Crampton gave a music lesson after their departure, she opened the book at one of their improved versions, which ran as follows:-- "Wink to me only with thy nose, And I will sing through mine." Miss Crampton hated boyish vulgarity; she turned the page, but matters were no better.


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