have just sent me more money than I shall use this year, and you can
pay me back when you like. I am afraid I shan't be able to come down
to you after the 'Varsity match, as I have promised to go with a
reading party to Cornwall for two months. I believe the only thing to
do down there is to play golf, which isn't much fun, but Henderson is
coming, and we shall try to get some cricket. Please remember me to
your people. Yours ever, F. F.

"P.S. I suppose you won't come down to Cornwall; the men are all right,
five of them."

Now Fred had spent nearly all his school-holidays with me, and since we
had been at Oxford he had been down for both vacs, so for him to write
and say calmly that he had made arrangements to go on a wretched
reading party and then to ask me in a postscript to join it, made me
want to go to Oriel at once and speak to him. But, fortunately, it was
nearly eleven o'clock and I could not get out of college, so as Murray
had gone back to his room I went along the passage to work off some of
my agitation on him. Murray, however, was one of those annoying men
who know exactly when they have had enough of anybody, and I found his
oak sported. I beat upon it for some time without any result, and
having told Murray my opinion of him in a voice loud enough to
penetrate almost anything, I went back to my own rooms and sat down to
write to Fred. In the course of an hour I wrote and tore up several
letters. Some of them I intended to be dignified, some of them were
abusive; in some I kept the cheque, but in most of them I sent it back;
in one I enclosed it with the words, "you will find the cheque you were
good enough to offer me;" that was the first I wrote, for I was quite
incapable of even thanking him until the labours of the imposition
which I had set myself began to tell upon me.

I had just torn up the seventh letter, and after a desperate struggle
whether I should begin the eighth "Dear Fred" or "Dear Foster" had
compromised matters by writing "Dear F. F.," when Jade Ward began to
yell my name down in the quad, and I went to the window at once and
told him to shut up. For the Warden's house was in the back quad, and
although I was pleased to think the Warden my friend I knew he always
slept with his window open, because he had told me so in a very great
outburst of confidence, and I did not want my wretched name to break in
upon his night's rest. I had not got so many dons on my side that I
c