'What had I better do?' 'We had better get hold of Amy first of all,' said Tip, referring any
difficulty to her as a matter of course. 'I would rather walk about all night--it's not much to do--than give
that trouble.' 'You needn't do that, if you don't mind paying for a bed. If you don't
mind paying, they'll make you up one on the Snuggery table, under the
circumstances. If you'll come along, I'll introduce you there.'
As they passed down the yard, Arthur looked up at the window of the room
he had lately left, where the light was still burning. 'Yes, sir,' said
Tip, following his glance. 'That's the governor's. She'll sit with him
for another hour reading yesterday's paper to him, or something of that
sort; and then she'll come out like a little ghost, and vanish away
without a sound.' 'I don't understand you.'
'The governor sleeps up in the room, and she has a lodging at the
turnkey's. First house there,' said Tip, pointing out the doorway into
which she had retired. 'First house, sky parlour. She pays twice as much
for it as she would for one twice as good outside. But she stands by the
governor, poor dear girl, day and night.'
This brought them to the tavern-establishment at the upper end of the
prison, where the collegians had just vacated their social evening club.
The apartment on the ground-floor in which it was held, was the Snuggery
in question; the presidential tribune of the chairman, the pewter-pots,
glasses, pipes, tobacco-ashes, and general flavour of members, were
still as that convivial institution had left them on its adjournment.
The Snuggery had two of the qualities popularly held to be essential to
grog for ladies, in respect that it was hot and strong; but in the third
point of analogy, requiring plenty of it, the Snuggery was defective;
being but a cooped-up apartment.
The unaccustomed visitor from outside, naturally assumed everybody here
to be prisoners--landlord, waiter, barmaid, potboy, and all. Whether
they were or not, did not appear; but they all had a weedy look. The
keeper of a chandler's shop in a front parlour, who took in gentlemen
boarders, lent his assistance in making the bed. He had been a tailor in
his time, and had kept a phaeton, he said. He boasted that he stood up
litigiously for the interests of the college; and he had undefined and
undefinable ideas that the marshal intercepted a 'Fund,' which ought to
come to the collegians. He liked to believe this, and always impressed
the shadowy grievance on new-comers and strangers; though he could not,
for his life, have explained what Fund he meant, or how the notion had
got rooted in his soul.