ed Eton study with the
addition of smoking paraphernalia. The overmantel was plumed with small
photographs of pleasant young creatures in the gay nautical costumes of
the Fourth of June and festooned hats of Alexandra or Monarch, of the
same pleasant young creatures at an earlier and chubbier age, of the
same pleasant young creatures with penciled mustaches and the white
waistcoat of Pop. In addition to their individual commemorations the
pleasant young creatures would appear again in house groups, in winning
house elevens, and most exquisitely of all in Eton Society. Michael
always admired the photographs of Pop, for they seemed to him to
epitomize all the traditions of all the public-schools of England, to
epitomize them moreover with something of that immortality of captured
action expressed by great Athenian sculpture. In comparison with Pop the
Harrow Philathletic Society was a barbarous group, with all the
self-consciousness of a deliberate archaism. Besides the personal
photographs in Lonsdale's room there were studies of grouse by Thorburn;
and Michael, remembering Alan's grouse, felt in accord with Lonsdale and
with all that Lonsdale stood for. Knowing Alan, he felt that he knew
Lonsdale, and at once he became more at ease with all his contemporaries
in Lonsdale's room. Michael looked at the colored prints of Cecil
Aldin's pictures and made up his mind he would buy a set for Alan: also
possibly he would buy for Alan the Sir Galahad of Watts which was rather
better than The Soul's Awakening.

After Lonsdale's pictures Michael surveyed Lonsdale's books, the
brilliantly red volumes of Jorrocks, the two or three odd volumes of the
Badminton library, and the school books tattered and ink-splashed. More
interesting than such a library were the glossy new briars, the virgin
meerschaum, the patent smoking-tables and another table evidently
designed to make drinking easy, but by reason of the complexity of its
machinery actually more likely to discourage one forever from
refreshment. The rest of the space, apart from the furniture bequeathed
by the noisy Templeton-Collins when he moved to larger rooms above, was
crowded with the freshmen whom after hall Lonsdale had so hastily
gathered together unassorted.

"I ordered coffee for sixteen," announced the host. "I thought it would
be quicker than making it in a new machine that my sister gave me. It
just makes enough for three, and the only time I tried, it took about an