The Casual Ward

he indulgence of was formerly more disguised, these a man easily dared to do, it being uncertain on the one hand whether his tutor has the influenza, and on the other if he himself might not put on an aeger before being hauled he should pay the penalty. And though some, indeed, did things exactly contrary to this, and being before unaccustomed now went in the morning with a run to chapel in order that fewer being present the paradoxicalness of their appearance when compared with the multitude of those who were absent might gain them a prestige of virtue not real but simulated--yet with most there was now neither fear of the Dean by land nor by sea of their coaches: disobeying whom they ate and drank all kinds of things contrary to law, no one being willing to exert himself for that which seemed to be honourable, and calculating that the present abstention from pastry was not equivalent to the possibility of being bumped in the future about as much and not less than if he had smoked three pipes and a cheroot.