I'd bless you if you could put things right." And he put his feet upon the chair in front, and took up his novel.
Mansfield took the hint.

Nor did he misunderstand his indolent friend.
Ponty's indolence wasn't all laziness.

It was sometimes a cloak for perplexity; and the captain-to-be, as he said good-night, guessed shrewdly that not many pages of the novel would be skimmed that evening.
Ponty did, in fact, wake up a bit those last few weeks of the term.

He rambled down once or twice to the Juniors' tennis court, and terrified the small fry there by sprawling at full length on the grass within sight of the play.

It was a crowded corner of the fields and a noisy one, and, if the captain went there for a nap, he had queer notions of a snug berth.