as much as you like. That's
Nationalism, and therefore Liberalism, Cartmell."

"I agree!"

"You don't, but I'll take your word. But what was I saying? Oh yes,
about Oxford. Oxford is all right. I know you get the worst wine in
the world there--I suppose it's specially imported for the benefit of
the young men of the world who believe that anything is nectar if you
pay more than ten bob a bottle for it--but you still find people
drinking properly. Richly, I mean, and with conviction. I think I'd
rather be a teetotaller----"

"Which God avert!" put in Cartmell.

"Amen to that. Yes, I'd rather be a True Blue than drink one glass of
wine at dinner. One glass! It's an insult. Now at Oxford----"

"But, father," Robert interrupted, "the don of to-day is just the sort
of person who does drink one glass of wine. With a kind of ghastly
self-conscious moderation he sips some claret and then hurries off to
organise a mission meeting. There aren't any good old fogeys left,
only some fogeys without the merits of fogeyism. They've got
consciences and think about social reform and the possibility of all
classes pulling together before the last Red Day. You know the kind of
thing. By Good Will out of Nervousness."

"Well then," answered Mr Berrisford, "I'm wrong. Oxford is going to
the dogs. I suppose they had to let the dons marry, but they might
have foreseen that the kind of women who would pounce on the dons
wouldn't understand about the good life. I expect it's the women that
are destroying Oxford. When Oxford spread northwards, it spread to the
devil."

"But this is downright Toryism," protested Cartmell. "You call
yourself a revolutionary!"

"So I am. But I'm sound about tradition and things that matter. I
don't want soaking: I want proper drinking and proper talking. I
thought it might have lingered in one or two common-rooms. Anyhow, the
undergraduates----"

He paused a moment and then went on:

"I remember Oxford as a place where I had some excellent pipes and
never took my breakfast till I wanted it. It was a place where I
worked devilish hard when I hadn't anything better to do. And I worked
sensibly. No gentleman works after lunch or dinner. He walks or buys
books after lunch and after dinner he talks. You must talk at Oxford,
Martin."

"At debates, do you mean?"

"Not at the Union. Oh, Lord, not there. Robert has done that, and
look at him. He's a broken man. He used to sp