s pompousness.

Michael and Lonsdale found out that to the list of guests they had
established must be added the names of Maurice, Wedderburn and two
freshmen who were already favorably reported through the college as good
sportsmen.

Two evenings later, at seven o'clock, Michael, Maurice, Lonsdale,
Wedderburn, and Grainger, bowed and starched, stood in Venner's,
drinking peach bitters sharpened by the addition of gin.

"The men have gone in to hall," said Venner. "You ought to start round
to the Warden's lodgings at ten past seven. Now don't be late. I expect
you'll have a capital dinner."

"Champagne, Venner?" asked Lonsdale.

"Oh, bound to be! Bound to be," said Venner. "The Warden knows how to
give a dinner. There's no doubt of that."

"Caviare, Venner?" asked Maurice.

"I wouldn't say for certain. But if you get an opportunity to drink any
of that old hock, be sure you don't forget. It's a lovely wine. I wish
we had a few dozen in the J.C.R. Now don't go and get tipsy like some of
our fellows did once at a dinner given by the Warden."

"Did they, Venner?" asked everybody, greatly interested.

"It was just after the Transvaal war broke out. Only three or four years
ago. There was a man called Castleton, a cousin of our Castleton, but a
very different sort of man, such a rowdy fellow. He came out from the
Warden's most dreadfully tipsy, and the men were taking him back to his
rooms, when he saw little Barnaby, a Science don, going across New quad.
He broke away from his friends and shouted out, 'there's a blasted
Boer,' and before they could stop him, he'd knocked poor little Barnaby,
a most nervous fellow, down in the wet grass and nearly throttled him.
It was hushed up, but Castleton was never asked again you may be sure,
and then soon after he volunteered for the front and died of enteric. So
you see what comes of getting tipsy. Now you'd better start."

Arm in arm the five of them strolled through Cloisters until they came
to the gothic door of the Warden's Lodgings. Up the Warden's majestic
staircase they followed the butler into the Warden's gothic drawing-room
where they shook hands with the great moon-faced Warden himself, and
with Miss Crackanthorpe, who was very much like her brother, and nearly
as round on a much smaller scale. They nodded to the Dean, mentally
calculating how many roll-calls they were behind, for the Dean
notwithstanding the geniality of his greeting had one gray eye that
seem