ised certain strange economies,
and on this occasion, learning that the Dashwoods were coming without
the Warden, she decided to come in the costume in which she usually
spent the morning hours, toiling in the garden.

The party consisted of the three ladies from King's, Mr. Bingham, Fellow
of All Souls, and Mr. and Mrs. Harding.

Mr. Bingham was a man of real learning; he was a bachelor, and he made
forcible remarks in the soft deliberate tone of a super-curate. He
laughed discreetly as if in the presence of some sacred shrine. In the
old pre-war days there had been many stories current in Oxford about
Bingham, some true and some invented by his friends. All of them were
reports of brief but effective conversations between himself and some
other less sophisticated person. Bingham always accepted invitations
from any one who asked him when he had time, and if he found himself
bored, he simply did not go again. Boreham had got hold of Bingham and
had asked him to lunch, so he had accepted. It was one of the days when
he did _not_ go up to the War Office, but when he lectured to women
students. He had to lunch somewhere, and he had bicycled out, intending
to bicycle back, rain or no rain, for the sake of exercise.

Then there were Mr. and Mrs. Harding. Harding, who had taken Orders
(just as some men have eaten dinners for the Bar), was Fellow and Tutor
of a sporting College. His tutorial business had been for many years to
drive the unwilling and ungrateful blockhead through the Pass Degree.
His private business was to assume that he was a "man of the world." It
was a subject that engrossed what must (in the absence of anything more
distinctive), be called the "spiritual" side of his nature. His wife,
who had money, lived to set a good example to other Dons' wives in
matters of dress and "tenue," and she had put on her best frock in
anticipation of meeting the "County." Indeed, the Hardings had taken up
Boreham because he was not a college Don but a member of "Society." They
were, like Bingham, at Chartcote for the first time. It was an
unpleasant shock to Mr. Harding to find that instead of the County,
other Oxford people had been asked to luncheon. Fortunately, however,
the Oxford people were the Dashwoods! The Hardings exchanged glances,
and Harding, who had entered the room in his best manner, now looked
round and heaved a sigh, letting himself spiritually down with a sort of
thump. Bingham his old school-fellow and