mall pellets of
belladonna for the Honourable Cornelius's cold and infinitesimal drops of
aconite for John Short's headaches, until she observed that John never
had a headache unless he had worked too much, and Angleside always had a
cold when he did not want to work at all. Especially in the department of
the commissariat she showed great activity, and the reputation the vicar
had acquired for feeding his pupils well had perhaps more to do with his
success than he imagined. She was never tired of repeating that
Englishmen needed plenty of good food, and she had no principles which
she did not practise. She even thought it right to lecture young
Angleside upon his idleness at stated intervals. He always replied with
great gentleness that he was awfully stupid, you know, and Mr. Ambrose
was awfully good about it and he hoped he should not be pulled when he
went up. And strange to relate he actually passed his examination and
matriculated, to his own immense astonishment and to the no small honour
and glory of the Reverend Augustin Ambrose, vicar of Billingsfield,
Essex. But when that great day arrived certain events occurred which are
worthy to be chronicled and remembered.

CHAPTER II.

In the warm June weather young Angleside went up to pass his examination
for entrance at Trinity. There is nothing particularly interesting or
worthy of note in that simple process, though at that time the custom of
imposing an examination had only been recently imported from Oxford. For
one whole day forty or fifty young fellows from all parts of the country
sat at the long dining-tables in the beautiful old hall and wrote as
busily as they could, answering the printed questions before them, and
eyeing each other curiously from time to time. The weather was warm and
sultry, the trees were all in full leaf and Cambridge was deserted. Only
a few hard-reading men, who stayed up during the Long, wandered out with
books at the backs of the colleges or strayed slowly through the empty
courts, objects of considerable interest to the youths who had come up
for the entrance examination--chiefly pale men in rather shabby clothes
with old gowns and battered caps, and a general appearance of being the
worse for wear.

Angleside had been in Cambridge before and consequently lost no time in
returning to Billingsfield when the examination was over. Short was to
spend the summer at the vicarage, reading hard until the term began, when
he was