Dashwood without having to be rude to her hostess. He had
done it by exchanging Mrs. Potten for the younger lady with a deftness
on which he congratulated himself, though it was true that Lady Dashwood
had said to May Dashwood, "Go and see over the College with Mr.
Boreham."

Miss Scott was, most fortunately, absorbed in playing at shop with Mrs.
Harding.

Boreham's course was clear. He calculated with satisfaction that he had
a good hour before him alone with Mrs. Dashwood. He could show her every
corner of Christ Church and do it slowly; the brief explanation (of a
disparaging nature) that he would be obliged to make on the details of
that historic building would only serve to help him out at, perhaps,
difficult moments. It would be easier for him to talk freely and prepare
her mind for a proper appreciation of the future which lay before her,
while he walked beside her and pointed out irrelevant things, than it
would have been if he had been obliged to sit still in a chair facing
her, for example, and stick to his subject. It seemed to him best to
begin by speaking quite frankly in praise of himself. Boreham had his
doubts whether any man is really humble in his estimation of himself,
however much he may pretend to be; and if, indeed, any man were truly
humble, then, in Boreham's opinion, that man was a fool.

As soon as they had crossed St. Aldates and had entered the gate under
Tom Tower, Boreham introduced the subject of his own merits, by glancing
round the great quadrangle and remarking that he was thankful that he
had never been subjected to the fossilising routine of a classical
education.

"The study of dead languages is a 'cul-de-sac,'" he explained. "You can
see the effect it has had in the very atmosphere of Oxford. You can see
the effect it has had on Middleton, dear fellow, who got a double First,
and the Ireland, and everything else proper and useless, and who is
now--what? A conscientious schoolmaster, and nothing more!"

It was necessary to bring Middleton in because May Dashwood might not
have had the time or the opportunity of observing all Middleton's
limitations. She probably would imagine that he was a man of ideas and
originality. She would take for granted (not knowing) that the head of
an Oxford College was a weighty person, a successful person. Also
Middleton was a good-looking-man, as good-looking as he, Boreham, was
himself (only of a more conventional type), and therefore not to be
d