mbert. I condoled
with him on having such a remarkably exclusive sister, but he did not
take my sympathy in the proper spirit.

My friends were most certainly getting out of hand. In St. Cuthbert's,
Murray was the most sensible of the lot, because he enjoyed himself in
a steady sort of way, saw the humorous side of everything and went to
bed in decent time. I knew just where I was with Murray, he was always
glad to see me in his rooms, and he kept his opinions about Ward and
Dennison to himself, unless I simply pumped them out of him. No one
who did not object to fat men because they were fat could help liking
Collier, he was so comfortable and peaceful, and Lambert, with his
magnificent opinion of himself, which he expressed frequently in a
half-comical, half-serious fashion, was to me more like a man on the
stage than an ordinary undergraduate. From morning to night Lambert
was self-conscious, even at the wine, when he was sitting on the floor
with Webb, he did not forget to shoot down his cuffs. I have already
said that Dennison played the piano, he was also considered a wit, and
fired off things which Lambert said were epigrams, but Collier, who was
full of curious information, declared that most of them were adapted
from the Book of Proverbs. However that may be, Dennison had a
reputation as a conversationalist, which meant that he wanted to talk
all the time. He bored me terribly.

But the man who really worried me was Ward. At first I had thought
that he merely wanted to amuse himself, and did not care what he did as
long as he got some fun out of it. He did not seem to trouble what men
he knew if they were useful to him, and having come to that conclusion
about him, I felt that as far as he and I were concerned there was
nothing else to bother about. It was not any wonder to me that Foster,
who only knew him slightly, disliked him most vigorously, but when Ward
came, asking me to take my money back and showing all the best side of
his nature, he gave me more to think about than I wanted. An entirely
different man had appeared, acknowledging himself a gambler, and not
pretending to be sorry--for which I liked him--but with qualities which
I had never suspected.

So occupied was I in wondering how I could persuade Foster to change
his opinion of Ward that I forgot the day was Sunday, and that I had
intended to go to morning chapel and write some letters at the Union.
It was nearly twelve o'clock whe