d, Mr. Merivale of Christ Church. For he's a jolly
good fellow and all that. My friend Mr. Wedderburn's a jolly good
fellow, too, and my friend Mr. Sterne on my center is a jolly good
fellow and a jolly good bowler and so say all of us. As for my friend
Tommy Grainger--whom I will not call Mister, having known him since we
were boys together--I will here say that I confidently anticipate he
will get his blue next term and show the Tabs that he's a jolly good
fellow. I will not mention the rest of us by name--all jolly good
fellows--except our host. He's given us a good dinner and good wine and
good company, which nobody can deny. So here's his health."

Then, in a phantasmagoria in which brilliant liqueurs and a meandering
procession of linked arms and the bells of Oxford and a wet night were
all indistinguishably confused in one strong impression, Michael passed
through his first terminal dinner.

CHAPTER IV

CHEYNE WALK

The Christmas vacation was spent in searching London for a new house.
Mrs. Fane, when Carlington Road was with a sigh of relief at last
abandoned, would obviously have preferred to go abroad at once and
postpone the consideration of a future residence; but Michael with
Stella's support prevailed upon her to take more seriously the problem
of their new home.

Ultimately they fixed upon Chelsea, indeed upon that very house Stella
had chosen for its large studio separated by the length of a queer
little walled garden from the rest of the house. Certainly 173 Cheyne
Walk was better than 64 Carlington Road, thought Michael as, leaning
back against the parapet of the Embankment, he surveyed the mellow
exterior in the unreal sunlight of the January noon. Empty as it was, it
diffused an atmosphere of beauty and comfort, of ripe dignity and
peaceful solidity. The bow windows with their half-opaque glass seemed
to repulse the noise and movement of the world from the tranquil
interior they so sleekly guarded. The front door with its shimmering
indigo surface and fanlight and dolphin-headed knocker and on either
side of the steps the flambeaux-stands of wrought iron, the
three-plaster medallions and the five tall windows of the first story
all gave him much contemplative pleasure. He and his mother and Stella
had in three weeks visited every feasible quarter of London and as
Michael thought of Hampstead's leaf-haunted by-streets, of the still
squares of Kensington, even of Camden Hill's sky-crowned