for me
like Cambridge. I shall only look at the outside of homes. According to
your metaphor, I shall live in the street, and it matters very much to
me what I find there."

"You'll live in another house right enough," said Ansell, rather
uneasily. "Only take care you pick out a decent one. I can't think
why you flop about so helplessly, like a bit of seaweed. In four years
you've taken as much root as any one."

"Where?"

"I should say you've been fortunate in your friends."

"Oh--that!" But he was not cynical--or cynical in a very tender way.
He was thinking of the irony of friendship--so strong it is, and so
fragile. We fly together, like straws in an eddy, to part in the open
stream. Nature has no use for us: she has cut her stuff differently.
Dutiful sons, loving husbands, responsible fathers these are what she
wants, and if we are friends it must be in our spare time. Abram and
Sarai were sorrowful, yet their seed became as sand of the sea, and
distracts the politics of Europe at this moment. But a few verses of
poetry is all that survives of David and Jonathan.

"I wish we were labelled," said Rickie. He wished that all the
confidence and mutual knowledge that is born in such a place as
Cambridge could be organized. People went down into the world saying,
"We know and like each other; we shan't forget." But they did forget,
for man is so made that he cannot remember long without a symbol; he
wished there was a society, a kind of friendship office, where the
marriage of true minds could be registered.

"Why labels?"

"To know each other again."

"I have taught you pessimism splendidly." He looked at his watch.

"What time?"

"Not twelve."

Rickie got up.

"Why go?" He stretched out his hand and caught hold of Rickie's ankle.

"I've got that Miss Pembroke to lunch--that girl whom you say never's
there."

"Then why go? All this week you have pretended Miss Pembroke awaited
you. Wednesday--Miss Pembroke to lunch. Thursday--Miss Pembroke to tea.
Now again--and you didn't even invite her."

"To Cambridge, no. But the Hall man they're stopping with has so many
engagements that she and her friend can often come to me, I'm glad to
say. I don't think I ever told you much, but over two years ago the man
she was going to marry was killed at football. She nearly died of grief.
This visit to Cambridge is almost the first amusement she has felt up to
taking. Oh, they go back tomorrow! Give me breakfast tomo