The Firm of Girdlestone. Артур Конан Дойл

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СКАЧАТЬ and amazed his friends. His old college companions hardly recognized Tom's honest phiz as it looked out above the most fashionable of coats and under the glossiest of hats.

      His father was anything but edified by the change.

      "I don't know what's coming over the lad, Kate," he remarked after one of his visits. "If I thought he was going to turn to a fop, by the Lord Harry I'd disown him! Don't you notice a change in him yourself?"

      Kate managed to evade the question, but her bright blush might have opened the old man's eyes had he observed it. He hardly realized yet that his son really was a man, and still less did he think of John Harston's little girl as a woman. It is generally some comparative stranger who first makes that discovery and brings it home to friends and relatives.

      Love has an awkward way of intruding itself at inconvenient times, but it never came more inopportunely than when it smote one who was reading for his first professional examination. During these weeks, when Tom was stumping about in boots which were two sizes too small for him, in the hope of making his muscular, well-formed foot a trifle more elegant, and was splitting gloves in a way which surprised his glover, all his energies ought by rights to have been concentrated upon the mysteries of botany, chemistry, and zoology. During the precious hours that should have been devoted to the mastering of the sub-divisions of the celenterata or the natural orders of endogenous plants, he was expending his energies in endeavouring to recall the words of the song which his cousin had sung the evening before, or to recollect the exact intonation with which she remarked to him that it had been a fine day, or some other equally momentous observation. It follows that, as the day of the examination came round, the student, in his lucid intervals, began to feel anxious for the result. He had known his work fairly well, however, at one time, and with luck he might pull through. He made an energetic attempt to compress a month's reading into a week, and when the day for the written examination came round he had recovered some of his lost ground. The papers suited him fairly well, and he felt as he left the hall that he had had better fortune than he deserved. The viva voce ordeal was the one, however, which he knew would be most dangerous to him, and he dreaded it accordingly.

      It was a raw spring morning when his turn came to go up. His father and

      Kate drove round with him to the University gates.

      "Keep up your pluck, Tom," the old gentleman said. "Be cool, and have all your wits about you. Don't lose your head, whatever you do."

      "I seem to have forgotten the little I ever knew," Tom said dolefully, as he trudged up the steps. As he looked back he saw Kate wave her hand to him cheerily, and it gave him fresh heart.

      "We shall hope to see you at lunch time," his father shouted after him. "Mind you bring us good news." As he spoke the carriage rattled away down the Bridges, and Tom joined the knot of expectant students who were waiting at the door of the great hall.

      A melancholy group they were, sallow-faced, long-visaged and dolorous, partly from the effects of a long course of study and partly from their present trepidation. It was painful to observe their attempts to appear confident and unconcerned as they glanced round the heavens, as if to observe the state of the weather, or examined with well-feigned archaeological fervour the inscriptions upon the old University walls. Most painful of all was it, when some one, plucking up courage, would venture upon a tiny joke, at which the whole company would gibber in an ostentatious way, as though to show that even in this dire pass the appreciation of humour still remained with them. At times, when any of their number alluded to the examination or detailed the questions which had been propounded to Brown or Baker the day before, the mask of unconcern would be dropped, and the whole assembly would glare eagerly and silently at the speaker. Generally on such occasions matters are made infinitely worse by some Job's comforter, who creeps about suggesting abstruse questions, and hinting that they represent some examiner's particular hobby. Such a one came to Dimsdale's elbow, and quenched the last ray of hope which lingered in the young man's bosom.

      "What do you know about cacodyl?" was his impressive question.

      "Cacodyl?" Tom cried aghast. "It's some sort of antediluvian reptile, isn't it?"

      The questioner broke into a sickly smile. "No," he said. "It's an organic explosive chemical compound. You're sure to be asked about cacodyl. Tester's dead on it. He asks every one how it is prepared."

      Tom, much perturbed at these tidings, was feverishly endeavouring to extract some little information from his companion concerning the compound, when a bell rang abruptly inside the room and a janitor with a red face and a blue slip of paper appeared at the door.

      "Dillon, Dimsdale, Douglas," this functionary shouted in a very pompous voice, and three unhappy young men filed through the half-opened door into the solemn hall beyond.

      The scene inside was not calculated to put them at their ease. Three tables, half a dozen yards from each other, were littered with various specimens and scientific instruments, and behind each sat two elderly gentlemen, stern-faced and critical. At one side were stuffed specimens of various small beasts, numerous skeletons and skulls, large jars containing fish and reptiles preserved in spirits of wine, jawbones with great teeth which grinned savagely at the unfortunate candidate, and numerous other zoological relics. The second table was heaped over with a blaze of gorgeous orchids and tropical plants, which looked strangely out of place in the great bleak room. A row of microscopes bristled along the edge. The third was the most appalling of all, for it was bare with the exception of several sheets of paper and a pencil. Chemistry was the most dangerous of the many traps set to ensnare the unwary student.

      "Dillon – botany; Dimsdale – zoology; Douglas – chemistry," the janitor shouted once more, and the candidates moved in front of the respective tables. Tom found himself facing a great spider crab, which appeared to be regarding him with a most malignant expression upon its crustacean features. Behind the crab sat a little professor, whose projecting eyes and crooked arms gave him such a resemblance to the creature in front that the student could not help smiling.

      "Sir," said a tall, clean-shaven man at the other end of the table, "be serious. This is no time for levity."

      Tom's expression after that would have made the fortune of a mute.

      "What is this?" asked the little professor, handing a small round object to the candidate.

      "It is an echinus – a sea-urchin," Tom said triumphantly.

      "Have they any circulation?" asked the other examiner.

      "A water vascular system."

      "Describe it."

      Tom started off fluently, but it was no part of the policy of the examiners to allow him to waste the fifteen minutes allotted them in expatiating upon what he knew well. They interrupted him after a few sentences.

      "How does this creature walk?" asked the crab-like one.

      "By means of long tubes which it projects at pleasure."

      "How do the tubes enable the creature to walk?"

      "They have suckers on them."

      "What are the suckers like?"

      "They are round hollow discs."

      "Are you sure they are round?" asked the other sharply.

      "Yes," said Tom stoutly, though his ideas on the subject were rather vague."

      "And how does this sucker act?" asked the taller examiner.

      Tom began to feel that these two men were exhibiting СКАЧАТЬ