Beauchamp was no great favourite even in his own set; for there is one
kind of religion in which the more devoted a man is, the fewer
proselytes he makes: the worship of himself.
CHAPTER XXXV.
One morning, about two months from the beginning of the session, after
the students had been reading for some time in the Greek class, the
professor was seen, not unexpectedly to part of the assembly, to look
up at the ceiling with sudden discomposure. There had been a heavy fall
of snow in the night, and one of the students, whose organ of humour
had gained at the expense of that of veneration, had, before the
arrival of the professor, gathered a ball of the snow, and thrown it
against the ceiling with such forceful precision, that it stuck right
over the centre of the chair. This was perhaps the first time that such
a trick had been dared in the first class, belonging more properly to
the advanced depravity of the second or third. When the air began to
get warm, the snow began to drop upon the head of the old professor;
and this was the cause of his troubled glance at the ceiling. But the
moment he looked up, Alec, seeing what was the matter, and feeling all
his natural loyalty roused, sprang from his seat, and rushing out of
the class-room, returned with a long broom which the sacrist had been
using to clear foot-paths across the quadrangle.
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