might be well enough! But for her! How could she blend with this
unknown, this unparalleled society?

Then the Berrisfords suggested that they should all go to Oxford for
Eights Week. Mr and Mrs Berrisford had to be in town: would Mary
Brodrick come? And, naturally, Freda? Both the girls accepted
eagerly. It was soon settled and rooms were engaged at the Mitre.

On reading the letter announcing their plans Martin groaned in the
spirit. It wasn't, of course it wasn't, that he did not want to see
Freda. Did he not write to her as eagerly as ever? Did she not
answer? But Eights Week of all times!

Martin was sufficiently a lover of Oxford, summery Oxford of the still
water-ways, to loathe and despise Eights Week, that Whitsuntide holiday
of the wealthy, when the city is invaded by a host of rich trippers,
whose tripping has not even the justification of beer-bottles and
hearty bestiality. He did not wish to eat salmon mayonnaise, to drink
champagne cup, to propel, in faultless flannels, a punt among a solid
mass of punts, to go for picnics where all London was revelling. His
choice would have been to launch a vessel on the upper river, to find
some tranquil backwater past Eynsham, with a canopy of willow and the
scene of flowering meadows; or else to make use of deserted tennis
courts and to enjoy things properly. Now they were going to break in
upon him: and indeed another idle vacation had left him work enough to
do. They had not come when he was a fresher and such things were
allowable, and the Berrisfords knew Oxford well. Presumably they
desired to show Freda the city and its ways. But why, oh why, in
Eights Week? It wasn't like the Berrisfords.

They arrived duly and lived in state at the Mitre: they mingled with
the crowds, tramped the colleges, and demanded to have things pointed
out to them. Mary Brodrick said all the right things. Martin
shuddered as the phrases came out in turn:

"Can we see the kitchens?" (at Christ Church).

"Where are the Prince's rooms?" (at Magdalen).

"Isn't this the clever college?" (at Balliol).

It was a gloomy ceremony.

There was Freda. And she ... well, he had to admit that she didn't
harmonise with this world of fine raiment and expensive bean-feasts.
The Freda who glittered in the punt, the Freda clothed sumptuously at
her uncle's expense was undeniably different from the insignificant
wisp of a girl in plain blue coat and skirt who had hurried out of