ns the case, and puts it back in his pocket, saying,
"Yes, you won't find two finer fellows in a long summer's day;
no, nor in twenty."

"And you expect them home, then, in a week or two?"

"Yes, I think so. Just about the time I shall be going down."

"Don't talk about going down. You haven't been here a week."

"Just a week. One out of three. Three weeks wasted in keeping
one's Master's term! Why can't you give a fellow his degree
quietly, without making him come and kick his heels here for
three weeks?"

"You ungrateful dog! Do you mean to say you haven't enjoyed
coming back, and sitting in dignity in the bachelors' seats in
chapel, and at the bachelors' table in hall, and thinking how
much wiser you are than the undergraduates? Besides, your old
friends want to see you, and you ought to want to see them."

"Well, I am very glad to see something of you again, old fellow.
I don't find that a year's absence has made any change in you.
But who else is there that I care to see? My old friends are
gone, and the year has made a great gap between me and the
youngsters. They look on me as a sort of don."

"Of course they do. Why, you are a sort of don. You will be an M.
A. in a fortnight, and a member of Convocation."

"Very likely; but I don't appreciate the dignity. I can tell you
being up here now is anything but enjoyable. You have never
broken with the place. And then, you always did you duty, and
have done the college credit. You can't enter into the feelings
of a fellow whose connexion with Oxford has been quite broken
off, and who wasted three parts of his time here, when he comes
back to keep his Master's."

"Come, come, Tom. You might have read more certainly, with
benefit to yourself and college, and taken a higher degree. But,
after all, didn't the place do you a great deal of good? and you
didn't do it much harm. I don't like to see you in this sort of
gloomy state; it isn't natural to you."

"It is becoming natural. You haven't seen much of me during the
last year, or you would have remarked it. And then, as I tell
you, Oxford, when one has nothing to do in it but to moon about,
thinking over one's past follies and sins, isn't cheerful. It
never was a very cheerful place to me at the best of times."

"Not even at pulling times?"

"Well, the river is the part I like best to think of. But even
the river makes me rather melancholy now. One feels one has done
with it."

"Why, Tom, I believe your