preferred
to listen, and to watch the tobacco-smoke stealing out past the
window-seat into the tranquil October air. He could see the court too,
and the college cat teasing the college tortoise, and the kitchen-men
with supper-trays upon their heads. Hot food for one--that must be for
the geographical don, who never came in for Hall; cold food for three,
apparently at half-a-crown a head, for some one he did not know; hot
food, a la carte--obviously for the ladies haunting the next staircase;
cold food for two, at two shillings--going to Ansell's rooms for himself
and Ansell, and as it passed under the lamp he saw that it was meringues
again. Then the bedmakers began to arrive, chatting to each other
pleasantly, and he could hear Ansell's bedmaker say, "Oh dang!" when
she found she had to lay Ansell's tablecloth; for there was not a breath
stirring. The great elms were motionless, and seemed still in the glory
of midsummer, for the darkness hid the yellow blotches on their leaves,
and their outlines were still rounded against the tender sky. Those elms
were Dryads--so Rickie believed or pretended, and the line between the
two is subtler than we admit. At all events they were lady trees, and
had for generations fooled the college statutes by their residence in
the haunts of youth.

But what about the cow? He returned to her with a start, for this would
never do. He also would try to think the matter out. Was she there or
not? The cow. There or not. He strained his eyes into the night.

Either way it was attractive. If she was there, other cows were there
too. The darkness of Europe was dotted with them, and in the far East
their flanks were shining in the rising sun. Great herds of them stood
browsing in pastures where no man came nor need ever come, or plashed
knee-deep by the brink of impassable rivers. And this, moreover, was the
view of Ansell. Yet Tilliard's view had a good deal in it. One might do
worse than follow Tilliard, and suppose the cow not to be there unless
oneself was there to see her. A cowless world, then, stretched round
him on every side. Yet he had only to peep into a field, and, click! it
would at once become radiant with bovine life.

Suddenly he realized that this, again, would never do. As usual, he had
missed the whole point, and was overlaying philosophy with gross and
senseless details. For if the cow was not there, the world and the
fields were not there either. And what would Ansell care