He
was made that way.
[Illustration: HE PUSHED UP HIS WINDOW AND CRAWLED THROUGH.]
CHAPTER XXII
THE PENFOLD TABLET FUND
The Easter term had been one of unadulterated discomfort for Jim Cotton.
He had felt the loss of Gus's helping hand terribly, and he had not yet
found another ass to "devil" for him in the way of classics or
mathematics. Philips, a former understudy to Gus, was called upon, but
with unsatisfactory results, and Cotton, _mirabile dictu_, was compelled
in sheer desperation to try to do his own work. Frankly, the Fifth of
St. Amory's was beyond Jim's very small attainments, classical or
otherwise. He had been hoisted up to that serene height by no means
_honoris causa_, but _aetatis causa_. Jim was verging on six feet, and
he filled his clothes very well into the bargain, and though his
scholarship was strictly junior school, the spectacle of Jim in Fourth
Form Etons would have been too entrancing a sight for daily
contemplation. Hence he had got his remove. Thrown over by Gus, unable
to discover a second jackal for the term so far, he had been left to the
tender mercy of Corker, Merishall and Co., and Jim was inclined to think
that they showed no quarter to a fallen foe. Corker had been distilled
venom on the particular morning with which this chapter deals on the
subject of Jim's Greek. Herodotus, as translated by Jim with the help of
a well-thumbed Bohn's crib, had emerged as a most unalluring mess of
pottage, and Dr.
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