that his father had been at Christ Church; and this tall fair whip-cracker served for him as the symbol of his father. He must have often stood here so, cracking a whip; and Michael never came into Peckwater without recreating him so occupied on a fine autumn afternoon, whip in hand, very tall and very fair in the glinting sunlight.

Dreams faded out, when Michael ran up the staircase to Alan's rooms; but he was full-charged again with all that suppressed intellectual excitement which he had counted upon finding in Oxford, but which he had failed to find until the wide tranquillity of Tom quad had given him, as it were, the benediction of the University.

"Hullo, Alan!" he cried. "How are you getting on? I say, why do they stick 'Mr.' in front of your name over the door? At St. Mary's we drop the 'Mr.' or any other sort of title. Aren't you unpacked yet? You are a slacker. Look here, I want you to come out with me at once. I've got to get some more picture-wire and a gown and a picture of Mona Lisa."

"Mona how much?" said Alan.

"La Gioconda, you ass."

"Sorry, my mistake," said Alan.

"And I saw some rattling book-shops as I came up the High," Michael went on. "What did you have for lunch? I had bread and cheese—commons we call it at St. Mary's. I say, I think I'm glad I don't have to wear a scholar's gown."

"I'm an exhibitioner," said Alan.

"Well, it's the same thing. I like a commoner's gown best. Where did you get that tea-caddy? I don't believe I've got one. Pretty good view from your window. Mine looks out on the High."

"Look here," asked Alan very solemnly, "where shall I hang this picture my mater gave me?"

He displayed in a green frame The Soul's Awakening.

"Do you like it?" Michael asked gloomily.

"I prefer these grouse by Thorburn that the governor gave me, but I like them both in a way," Alan admitted.

"I don't think it much matters where you hang it," Michael said. Then, thinking Alan looked rather hurt, he added hastily: "You see it's such a very square room that practically it might go anywhere."

"Will you have a meringue?" Alan asked, proffering a crowded plate.

"A meringue?" Michael repeated.

"We're rather famous for our meringues here," said Alan gravely. "We make them in the kitchen. I ordered a double lot in case you came in."

"You seem to have found out a good deal about Christ Church already," Michael observed.

"The House," Alan corrected. "We call it—in fact everybody calls it the House."

Michael was inclined to resent this arrogation by a college not his own of a distinct and slightly affected piece of nomenclature, and he wished he possessed enough knowledge of his own peculiar college customs to counter Alan's display.

"Well, hurry up and come out of the House," he urged. "You can't stay here unpacking all the afternoon."

"Why do you want to start buying things straight away?" Alan argued.

"Because I know what I want," Michael insisted.

"Since when?" Alan demanded. "I'm not going to buy anything for a bit."

"Come on, come on," Michael urged. He was in a hurry to enjoy the luxury of traversing the quads of Christ Church in company, of strolling down the High in company, of looking into shop windows in company, of finally defeating that first dismal loneliness with Alan and his company.

It certainly proved to be a lavish afternoon. Michael bought three straight-grained pipes so substantially silvered that they made his own old pipes take on an attenuated vulgarity. He bought an obese tobacco jar blazoned with the arms of his college and, similarly blazoned, a protuberant utensil for matches. He bought numerous ounces of those prodigally displayed mixtures of tobacco, every one of which was vouched for by the vendor as in its own way the perfect blend. He bought his cap and his gown and was measured by the tailor for a coat of Harris tweed such as everybody seemed to wear. He found the very autotype of Mona Lisa he coveted, and farther he was persuaded by the picture-dealer to buy for two guineas a signed proof of a small copperplate engraving of the Primavera. This expenditure frightened him from buying any more pictures that afternoon and seemed a violent and sudden extravagance. However, he paid a visit to the Bank where, after signing his name several times, he was presented with a check book. In order to be perfectly sure he knew how to draw a check, he wrote one then and there, and the five sovereigns the clerk shoveled out as irreverently as if they were chocolate creams, made him feel that his new check-book was the purse of Fortunatus.

Michael quickly recovered from the slight feeling of guilt that the purchase of the Botticelli print had laid upon his conscience, and in order to assert his independence in the face of Alan's continuous dissuasion, he bought a hookah, a miniature five-barred gate for a pipe-rack, a mother-of-pearl cigarette-holder which he dropped on the pavement outside the shop and broke in pieces, and finally seven ties of knitted silk.

By this time Michael and Alan had reached the Oriental Café in Cornmarket Street; and since it was now five o'clock and neither of them felt inclined to accept the responsibility of inviting the other back to tea, they went into the café and ate a quantity of hot buttered toast and parti-colored cakes. The only thing that marred their enjoyment and faintly disturbed their equanimity was the entrance of three exquisitely untidy undergraduates who stood for a moment in the doorway and surveyed first the crowded café in general, and then more particularly Michael and Alan with an expression of outraged contempt. After a prolonged stare one of them exclaimed in throaty scorn:

"Oh, god, the place is chock full of damned freshers!"

Whereupon he and his companions strode out again.

Michael and Alan looked at each other abashed. The flavor had departed from the tea: the brilliant hues of the cakes had paled: the waitress seemed to have become suddenly critical and haughty. Michael and Alan paid their bill and went out.

"Are you coming back to my rooms?" Michael asked. Yet secretly he half hoped that Alan would refuse. Dusk was falling, and he was anxious to be alone while the twilight wound itself about this gray city.

Alan said he wanted to finish unpacking, and Michael left him quickly, promising to meet him again to-morrow.

Michael did not wander far in that dusk of fading spires and towers, for a bookshop glowing like a jewel in the gloom of an ancient street lured him within. It was empty save for the owner, a low-voiced man with a thin pointed beard who as he stood there among his books seemed to Michael strangely in tune with his romantic surroundings, as much in tune as some old painting by Vandyck would have seemed leaning against the shelves of books.

A little wearily, almost cynically, Mr. Lampard bade Michael good evening.

"May I look round?" Michael asked.

The bookseller nodded.

"Just come up?" he inquired.

"To-day," Michael confessed.

"And what sort of books are you interested in?"

"All books," said Michael.

"This set of Pater for instance," the bookseller suggested, handing Michael a volume bound in thick sea-green cloth and richly stamped with a golden monogram. "Nine volumes. Seven pounds ten, or six pounds fifteen cash." This information he added in a note of disdainful tolerance.

Michael shook his head and looked amused by the offer.

"Of course, nobody really cares for books nowadays," Mr. Lampard went on. "In the early 'nineties it was different. Then everybody cared for books."

Michael resented this slur upon the generation to which he belonged.

"Seven pounds ten," he repeated doubtfully. How well those solid sea-green volumes would become the stately bookshelves of his room.

"What college?" asked Mr. Lampard. "St. Mary's? Ah, there used to be