ord abruptly I should think the best way is
to be hurried off by your people; it must save so many explanations
when you get home.

What happened to Dennison I cannot say; somebody said that he was going
round the world or on to the Stock Exchange, but Lambert denied both
these reports, and declared that he had reformed so violently that he
had become a teetotaler and intended to wear a blue riband in his
button-hole. I doubted the blue riband part of the story, and if
Dennison ever wore one I think it would only be on Boat-race day, for
it takes a tremendous lot of courage to wear a badge of any kind.

After Dennison had disappeared, Jack and I saw The Bradder nearly every
day. His keenness on the college increased instead of wearing off with
time, and he seemed to be exactly the right kind of man to be a don.
His energy was really terrific, and I received more goads than I could
endure conveniently, so I passed some of them on to Jack and chose
those which I liked the least, not, I am afraid, the ones which Jack
might be inclined to receive with patience.

The Bradder persuaded me to join both a Shakespearian and a Browning
Society, and as I could not plunge into such things by myself I dragged
Jack with me. The Shakespearian Society was pleasant enough, but after
two meetings of the Browningites Jack said flatly that he would not go
again. Some of the Browning men objected to the windows being opened,
and it is very difficult to keep awake in a stuffy room when you have
been taking hard exercise in the afternoon. Jack, at any rate, snored
so loudly at the second meeting that he shocked the President, and when
he woke up he interrupted a discussion by giving a very fluent lecture
on the advantages of ventilation. I expect that he would have been
turned out of the society if he had not resigned, and I ought not to
have dragged him into it, for he was so violently bored by the whole
thing that he declared he must have a little pleasure to make him
forget all about it.

"Something in the open air," he said to me, when he came to my rooms on
the morning after he had snored, and he looked at a volume of _Stubbs'
Constitutional History_ as if he was very tired of it. I was also
feeling rather dull, for I had already got through a fortnight of my
gating, and to be kept in college after nine o'clock night after night
is not very exciting.

"A little change is what we want," Jack went on, as I said nothing.

"I c