walk to the pavilion. Collier could not
speak without gasping for a quarter of an hour, and then he expressed
the determination of retiring permanently from the running path.

CHAPTER XI

A CRICKET MATCH AT BURTINGTON

The summer term at Oxford would be even more pleasant than it is if it
did not start in April and finish when the summer is just beginning. I
do not wish to say anything about weather, but without taking an
interest in the abnormal quantities of rain or wanting to know why the
sun shines so seldom, I do think that if the success of a term depends
largely upon an English May, it is apt to be very limited. I have been
told so often by quite truthful men that there are other people besides
undergraduates to be considered in Oxford, that I have never felt so
convinced about anything, except that Queen Anne is dead; but all the
same it seems to me that the undergraduate is not given a chance of
being comfortably warm for any length of time. And if the authorities
who fix the terms, or if they like it better, the academical year,
would understand that an undergraduate is a far nicer man when he is
comfortable, they might be inclined to cease from compelling him to
play cricket when it is impossible to think of anything but the biting
wind.

For my own part I am certain that I have never wanted to break rules or
windows when the sun shines, but some men, when they become depressed
by the weather, turn their thoughts to throwing things about, and there
are so many windows in a quad that wherever you throw you seem to hit
one of them. The only window I smashed was not entirely my fault, for
Ward ducked his head just as a tennis-ball was going to hit it; the
Subby, however, who was trying to instil logic into a lot of pass
"mods" men, was annoyed by broken glass falling into his lecture-room.
This was a bad beginning to the summer term, but had it not rained for
nearly two days I should have been playing cricket that morning, and if
Ward's head had happened to be in front of the Subby's lecture-room I
should not have been there to throw at it. I tried to explain this to
the Subby, but there is a certain kind of reasoning which does not make
much impression on either dons or schoolmasters. I asked him if he
thought any man who was booked to play cricket all day could sit down
at once and work when he heard that his match was scratched, and he
answered, "Undoubtedly." The Subby was a nice enough man