were alone.

"I'm afraid I wasn't much impressed by it in December," answered Martin.

"That wasn't Oxford," interrupted Robert. "That was a dismal city in
the Midlands seen at its worst."

"Exactly," said Mr Berrisford, breaking into the conversation. "Oxford
isn't a place. Everybody talks about the buildings and the age and the
dreaming spires. It goes down with the Yankees and the people who are
proud of having read _The Scholar Gipsy_, and I suppose it keeps up the
picture post card business."

"But there are good things," said Cartmell resentfully. He was of
Magdalen.

"Certainly. But these things are incidental and not essential. After
all, the best college--with all due respect to you, Cartmell, and to
you, Martin--has a front quad like a toy castle and a chapel--well, I
suppose it's the kind of chapel that particular college ought to have,
according to all tradition--a Great Speckled Warning against God. Half
the most sensible people in Oxford don't know a jot about the
architecture, but they know Oxford."

"Then," answered Cartmell, taking up the argument, as behoved a
Liberal, seriously, "would you mind if the whole show--the educational
work, I mean--were transferred to Margate or Southend or some place
with a little air? On your theory that would be a very sound plan."

"It has its points," added Robert. "Just think of the progs on a
seaside promenade."

"And the sea," continued his father, "is limitless. Many young men
would go down to the sea in ships and have business in great waters.
What a chance for enterprise! Moonlight trips round the bay."

"But seriously," said Cartmell, still smarting under the implied
contempt for Magdalen's beauty.

"The port lingers at your side," was the answer. "Restore the
circulation."

"Well, seriously," John Berrisford continued, when his glass had been
filled again, "to move would be fatal, because the traditions would all
go if you took them away from their home. But it's the traditions that
count, not the place. God knows I'm willing enough to be sentimental
about places. I can even enjoy hearing the song about 'Devon, glorious
Devon,' sung by a Dandy Coon baritone at an audience of Cockneys at
Teignmouth. I can understand a Scottish exile in America going a
hundred miles to hear Harry Lauder. To my mind places are the only
things about which a man has a right to be sentimental. No causes or
catch-words for me: but hills and valleys--