icker."

"What you really thought," said Michael, "was that you would have to
drive my sister in a hansom."

"Oh, no, I say, really," protested Lonsdale.

"I'm much more frightened of you than you could ever be of me," Stella
declared.

"Oh no, I say, really, are you? But I'm an awful ass, Miss Fane," said
Lonsdale encouragingly. "Hallo, here's the jolly old car."

As they drove past the castle, Lonsdale informed Stella it was the
county gaol, and when they reached the gaol he told her it was probably
Worcester College, or more familiarly Wuggins.

"You'll only have to tell her that All Souls is the County Asylum and
that Queens is a marmalade factory, and she'll have a pretty good notion
of the main points of interest in the neighborhood," said Michael.

"He always rags me," explained Lonsdale, smiling confidentially round at
the visitors. "I say, isn't Alan Merivale your nephew?" he asked Mrs.
Ross. "He's playing for the Varsity against Surrey. Sent down some very
hot stuff yesterday. We ought to buzz round to the Parks after lunch and
watch the game for a bit."

Wedderburn, who had been superintending the preparations for lunch, met
them in the lodge with a profound welcome, having managed to put at
least twenty years on to his age. Lunch had been laid in Lonsdale's
rooms, since he was one of the few men in college who possessed a
dining-room in addition to a sitting-room. Yet, notwithstanding that
Michael had invited the guests and that they were lunching in Lonsdale's
rooms, to Wedderburn by all was the leadership immediately accorded.

The changeless lunch of Eights Week with its salmon mayonnaise and cold
chicken and glimpses through the windows of pink and blue dresses going
to and fro across the green quadrangles, with its laughter and talk and
speculations upon the weather, with its overheated scout and scent of
lilac and hawthorn, went its course: as fugitive a piece of mirthfulness
as the dance of the mayflies over the Cher.

After lunch they walked to the Parks to watch Alan playing for the
Varsity. Wedderburn, who with people to entertain feared nothing and
nobody, actually went coolly into the pavilion and fetched out Alan who
was already in pads, waiting to go in. Michael watched very carefully
Alan's meeting with Stella, watched Alan's face fall when he saw her
beside Maurice and marked how nervously he fidgeted with his gloves.
There was a broken click from the field of play. It was time for