ld get a ticket, but I stopped him by repeating
that he could have mine.

"It won't be used unless you take it," I added.

Every one except Fred, who saw that something had happened, led me to
believe that I was very disagreeable and foolish.

"We arranged last night that we should go if Fred could get the
tickets," Nina said, and then by way of propitiating me she told me
that I knew how well I danced.

"You will spoil Nina's evening," Mrs. Faulkner declared, and Nina, I
must say, was pouting most magnificently.

"Why can't you come?" she asked. "Has it got anything to do with that
wretched note?"

"Not another row?" Jack Ward put in most inconsiderately.

"Fred never said anything about it till too late," I answered; "he kept
the whole thing so dark."

"I knew before luncheon," Nina replied, as if she had settled me
completely.

I managed to let Fred know that I wanted him to read the note, and
having opened the Oxford "Mag" no one saw that he had got the letter
inside the pages. For a minute I persuaded Jack steadfastly to take my
ticket and he refused with determination. If it had not been that Nina
was upset very easily, and Mrs. Faulkner had been known to have
hysteria without giving any one a moment's notice, I would have
brandished the note in their faces instead of standing first on one leg
and then on the other and looking a most hopeless fool.

I did not know what to say next, when Fred put down the magazine and
joined us by the window.

"If you can't well manage to come to-night," he said, "and it was most
awfully stupid of me not to tell you at once that we were going, I am
sure Ward will have this ticket," and he pulled it out of his pocket
and simply made Jack take it.

"I don't really think I can go, though I will turn up if I can," I
said, and Fred made the most of my promise and talked so much that
before I had to say anything else I found that he had persuaded Mrs.
Faulkner and Nina to go down to the river and watch Oriel rowing in the
earlier division. I went with them as far as the college lodge and
then I disappeared, for the note which I had received upset all my
hopes of enjoying myself for the rest of the day.

The first part of it was from Owen, who said he was feeling dreadfully
ill, but the second part was written by his landlady, and she seemed to
be in a terrible temper. As far as I could make out Owen was very much
worse and still refused to have a doctor. "He says,"