glish," my father said. "Dinner is already a
quarter of an hour late, I am going into the dining-room." He marched
off quickly and Nina began to laugh, but I think she must also have
been a little ashamed of herself.

"I am a scapegoat for everybody," I said to her; "for you, the cook,
and the gardener's boy, whose whistle is always mistaken for mine."

"Never mind," she answered, "you don't look very depressed."

"It isn't fair, all the same; you don't play the game," and as my
mother had already gone into the dining-room to sit rebukefully at a
foodless table I followed her.

These solemn waitings, which did not happen unfrequently, were comical
to me, and since my father never could understand why Nina and I were
amused at them, he had generally forgotten his original grievance
before dinner began.

When I got to London I could not help being struck by the difference
between a bishop at work and a bishop at play. The chief impression I
got of my uncle was of a man most strenuously at labour; if he wanted
to lecture me he never had time to do it, and nearly the first thing he
said was that I was to do exactly as I liked, and he gave me a
latch-key so that I might feel that I was a bother to nobody. He was
so extraordinarily kind and simple that I wondered how on earth it was
that I had really hated him at one time, for I had hated him quite
honestly, and I came to the conclusion that as soon as he had ceased to
be a pompous humorist he had become a very nice man. At any rate he no
longer made jokes, and I never had been able to think them good ones,
because those which I remembered had been nearly always directed at me.

The 'Varsity match was a complete failure owing to the weather, and was
never likely to be finished. Fred made fifteen in the one Oxford
innings, and as the whole side made under a hundred, he didn't do so
badly. But I think Cambridge might have won if the game had been
played out, so when it poured with rain on the third day, I did not
mind very much, apart from the fact that Lord's in wet weather is a
terribly dismal place. I went back about one o'clock to my uncle's
house and having found a huge London directory, I hunted for the name
of Owen. I soon found an address in Victoria Street, which seemed to
be the one for which I was looking. "Professor of Gymnastics, Boxing
and Fencing" was pretty well bound to be right, and in the afternoon I
started off to find Owen.

I wanted to as