Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/110

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
90
LITTLE MR. BOUNCER

CHAPTER XIII.


LITTLE MR. BOUNCER BIDS FAREWELL TO MR. VERDANT GREEN FOR A BRIEF SEASON.


THE good things on Mr. Fosbrooke's breakfast table were done justice to by little Mr. Bouncer, notwithstanding the fact that he had already breakfasted at the Mitre, with Mr. Bulpit and Mr. Smirke. In the London season, "men may come and men may go," on the same evening, to two or three Balls, Receptions, At Homes, or whatever the entertainment may be called; and our hero may be excused if, on the last morning of Term, and under peculiar circumstances, he not only went from breakfast-party Number One to breakfast-party Number Two, but contrived to enjoy them both. And, in the matter of Brazenface College versus the Mitre Hotel, it would have puzzled a Lucullus to decide to which breakfast to award the palm. It must have been from a full knowledge of the powers of the College cook that Mr. Four-in-hand Fosbrooke, with an artful assumption of the capabilities of the Brazenface kitchen and buttery,