l always keep their price, and of course all the
photogravures are included."

"All right. You might send them too."

Michael could not resist the swish of the watered silk as Volume One of
the Decameron was put back into its vacancy. And as he hurried down to
College the thought that he had spent nineteen pounds one shilling
scarcely weighed against the imagination of lamplight making luminous
those silken backs of faded blue and green and red and gold, against
those silk markers and the consciousness that now at last he was a buyer
of books, a buyer whose spirit would haunt that bookshop. He had
certainly never regretted the seventeen-and-sixpence he had spent on the
pirated works of Swinburne, and then he was a wretched schoolboy
balanced on the top of a ladder covetous of unattainable splendors, a
pitiable cipher in the accounts of Elson's bookshop. At Lampard's he was
already a personality.

All that so far happened to Michael not merely in one day at Oxford, but
really during his whole life was for its embarrassment nothing in
comparison with the first dinner in hall. As he walked through the
Cloisters and heard all about him the burble of jolly and familiar
conversation, he shuddered to think what in a minute he must face. The
list of freshmen, pinned up on the board in the Lodge, was a
discouraging document to those isolated members of public schools other,
than Eton, Winchester, Harrow or Charterhouse. These four seemed to have
produced all but six or seven of the freshmen. Eton alone was
responsible for half the list. What chance, thought Michael, could he
stand against such an impenetrable phalanx of conversation as was bound
to ensue from such a preponderance? However, he was by now at the top of
the steps that led up to hall, and a mild old butler was asking his
name.

"You'll be at the second freshmen's table. On the right, sir. Mr.
Wedderburn is at the head of your table, sir."

Michael was glad to find his table at the near end of hall, and
hurriedly taking his seat, almost dived into the soup that was quickly
placed before him. He did not venture to open a conversation with either
of his neighbors, but stared instead at the freshman occupying the
armchair at the head of the table, greatly impressed by his judicial
gravity of demeanor, his neat bulk and the profundity of his voice.

"How do you become head of a table?" Michael's left-hand neighbor
suddenly asked.

Michael said he really did not