sometimes to
Alan's rooms and ultimately persuading Alan to become a gondolier, an
attendant and a soldier. Moreover, he met various men from other
colleges, and he began to realize faintly thereby the individuality of
each college, but most of all perhaps the individuality of his own
college, as when Lonsdale came up to him one day with an expression of
alarm to say that he had been invited to lunch by the man who played
Launcelot Gobbo.

"Well, what of it?" said Michael. "He probably wants to borrow your
dog."

"He says he's at Lincoln," Lonsdale stammered.

"So he is."

"Well, I don't know where Lincoln is. Have you got a map or something of
Oxford?"

The performance of The Merchant of Venice took place and was a great
success. The annual supper of the club took place, when various old
members of theatrical appearance came down and made speeches and told
long stories about their triumphs in earlier days. Next morning the
auxiliary ladies returned to London, and in the afternoon the
disconsolate actors went down to the barges and encouraged their various
Toggers to victory.

Lonsdale forgot all about Miss Delacourt when he saw Tommy Grainger
almost swinging the St. Mary's boat into the apprehensive stern of the
only boat which stood between them and the headship, and that evening
his only lament was that the enemy had on this occasion escaped. The
Merchant of Venice with its tights and tinsel and ruffs faded out in
that Lenten week of drizzling rain, when every afternoon Michael and
Lonsdale and many others ran wildly along the drenched towing-path
beside their Togger. And when in the end St. Mary's failed to catch the
boat in front, Michael and Lonsdale and many others felt each in his own
way that after all it had been greatly worth while to try.

Michael came down for the Easter vacation with the pleasant excitement
of seeing 173 Cheyne Walk furnished and habitable. In deference to his
mother's particular wish he had not invited anybody to stay with him,
but he regretted he had not been more insistent when he saw each room in
turn nearly twice as delightful as he had pictured it.

There was his mother's own sitting-room whose rose du Barri cushions and
curtains conformed exactly to his own preconceptions, and there was
Stella's bedroom very white and severe, and his own bedroom pleasantly
mediaeval, and the dining-room very cool and green, and the drawing-room
with wallpaper of brilliant Chinese birds a