with his doing as he likes in
it--smoking included. Why, if such a room looked out both back and front
on to a blank dead wall it would still be a paradise, how much more then
when the view is of some quiet grassy court or cloister or garden, as
from the windows of the greater number of rooms at Oxford and Cambridge.

Theobald, as an old fellow and tutor of Emmanuel--at which college he had
entered Ernest--was able to obtain from the present tutor a certain
preference in the choice of rooms; Ernest's, therefore, were very
pleasant ones, looking out upon the grassy court that is bounded by the
Fellows' gardens.

Theobald accompanied him to Cambridge, and was at his best while doing
so. He liked the jaunt, and even he was not without a certain feeling of
pride in having a full-blown son at the University. Some of the
reflected rays of this splendour were allowed to fall upon Ernest
himself. Theobald said he was "willing to hope"--this was one of his
tags--that his son would turn over a new leaf now that he had left
school, and for his own part he was "only too ready"--this was another
tag--to let bygones be bygones.

Ernest, not yet having his name on the books, was able to dine with his
father at the Fellows' table of one of the other colleges on the
invitation of an old friend of Theobald's; he there made acquaintance
with sundry of the good things of this life, the very names of which were
new to him, and felt as he ate them that he was now indeed receiving a
liberal education. When at length the time came for him to go to
Emmanuel, where he was to sleep in his new rooms, his father came with
him to the gates and saw him safe into college; a few minutes more and he
found himself alone in a room for which he had a latch-key.

From this time he dated many days which, if not quite unclouded, were
upon the whole very happy ones. I need not however describe them, as the
life of a quiet steady-going undergraduate has been told in a score of
novels better than I can tell it. Some of Ernest's schoolfellows came up
to Cambridge at the same time as himself, and with these he continued on
friendly terms during the whole of his college career. Other
schoolfellows were only a year or two his seniors; these called on him,
and he thus made a sufficiently favourable _entree_ into college life. A
straightforwardness of character that was stamped upon his face, a love
of humour, and a temper which was more easily appeased th