It was Sunday—­and therefore John Bruce, the Engineering College Professor, was exceptionally busy.  On a-week-day he only had to deliver his carefully prepared lectures, interview students, read and return essays, take the chair at meetings of college societies, coach one or two “specialists,” superintend the games on the college gymkhana ground, interview seekers after truth and perverters of the same, write letters on various matters of college business, visit the hostel, set question papers and correct answers, attend common-room meetings, write articles for the college magazine and papers for the Scientific, Philosophical, Shakespearean, Mathematical, Debating, Literary, Historical, Students’, Old Boys’, or some other “union” and, if God willed, get a little exercise and private study at his beloved “subject” and invention, before preparing for the morrow.

On Sundays, the thousand and one things crowded out of the programme were to be cleared up, his home mail was to be written, and then arrears of work had to be attacked.

At four o’clock he addressed Roy Pittenweem and Mrs. MacDougall, his dogs, and said:—­

“There’s a bloomin’ bun-snatch somewhere, you fellers, don’t it?”.  Though a Professor and one of the most keen and earnest workmen in India, his own college blazers were not quite worn out, and Life, the great Artist, had not yet done much sketching on the canvas of his face—­in spite of his daily contact with the Science Professor, William Greatorex Bonnett, B.A., widely known as the Mad Hatter, the greatest of whose many great achievements is his avoidance of death at the hands of his colleagues and acquaintance.

Receiving no reply beyond a wink and a waggle, he dropped his blue pencil, rose, and went to the table sacred to litter; and from a wild welter of books, pipes, papers, golf-balls, hats, cigar-boxes, dog-collars, switches, cartridges and other sediment, he extracted a large gilt-edged card and studied it without enthusiasm or bias.

“Large coat of arms,” he murmured—­“patience—­no—­a pay-sheet on a monument asking for time; item a hand, recently washed; ditto, a dickey bird—­possibly pigeon plucked proper or gull argent; guinea-pig regardant and expectant; supporters, two bottliwallahs rampant.  Crest, a bum-boat flottant, and motto ‘Cinq-cento-percentum’.  All done in gold.  Likewise in gold and deboshed gothic, the legend ’Sir and Lady Fuggilal Potipharpar, At Home.  To meet Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Gosling-Green, M.P.  Five p.m.  C.T.’ ...  Now what the devil, Roy Pittenweem, is C.T.?  Is it ‘Curious Time’ or ‘Cut for Trumps’ or a new decoration for gutter plutocrats?  It might mean ‘Calcutta Time,’ mightn’t it, as the egregious Phossy and his gang would have it?  Well, we’ll go and look upon the Cornmealious Gosling-Green, M.P.’s, and chasten our soul from sinful pride—­ain’t it, Mrs. MacDougall?” and the Professor strolled across to the Sports Club for a cup of tea.