y apparelled, dawdling
along two together in low easy pony carriages, or lying on their
backs in punts for hours, smoking, with not even a _Bell's Life_
by them to pass the time. Dawdling and doing nothing were the
objects of his special abhorrence; but, with this trifling
exception, the Captain continued steadily to behold towers and
quadrangles, and chapels, and the inhabitants of the colleges,
through rose-coloured spectacles. His respect for a "regular
education" and for the seat of learning at which it was dispensed
was so strong, that he invested not only the tutors, doctors and
proctors (of whom he saw little except at a distance), but even
the most empty-headed undergraduate whose acquaintance he made,
with a sort of fancy halo of scientific knowledge, and often
talked to those youths in a way which was curiously bewildering
and embarrassing to them. Drysdale was particularly hit by it. He
had humour and honesty enough himself to appreciate the Captain,
but it was a constant puzzle to him to know what to make of it
all.

"He's a regular old brick, is the Captain," he said to Tom, on
the last evening of the old gentleman's visit, "but by Jove, I
can't help thinking he must be poking fun at us half his time. It
is rather too rich to hear him talking on as if we were all as
fond of Greek as he seems to be, and as if no man ever got drunk
up here."

"I declare I think he believes it," said Tom. "You see we're all
careful enough before him."

"That son of his, too, must be a good fellow. Don't you see he
can never have peached? His father was telling me last night what
a comfort it was to him to see that Jack's poverty had been no
drawback to him. He had always told him it would be so amongst
English gentlemen, and now he found him living quietly and
independently, and yet on equal terms, and friends, with men far
above him in rank and fortune 'like you, sir,' the old boy said.
By Jove, Brown, I felt devilish foolish. I believe I blushed, and
it isn't often I indulge in that sort of luxury. If I weren't
ashamed of doing it now, I should try to make friends with Hardy.
But I don't know how to face him, and I doubt whether he wouldn't
think me too much of a rip to be intimate with."

Tom, at his own special request, attended the Captain's
departure, and took his seat opposite to him and his son at the
back of the Southampton coach, to accompany him a few miles out
of Oxford. For the first mile the Captain was f