remember, don't you?" Tom simply nodded.

"But I must

be off early on Monday, as there is a social function at home that day and I must be there."

"Well, I'll ask Loder, anyhow," said Tom.

"That's right," exclaimed the Bursar cheerily; "feed the beast!"

144

CHAPTER X.

IN KING EDWARD STREET.

IN happy unconsciousness that his entertainer was regarding him in the light of a healthy subject for experiment, in blissful ignorance that three men of the world-two of them entire strangers had been laying plans for his benefit, Dick Loder had eaten an uncommonly good dinner, and was thoroughly enjoying his evening with M'Gregor. As Bertie Treherne was a sort of connecting-link between the two, that volatile young gentleman's personal appearance and character had been discussed at considerable length, and the verdict had been distinctly favourable.

"He is such a thorough little gentleman," observed Tom, as they drew their chairs to the fire. "Not that he is very little now though, by the way. But I knew him when he was at Eton. He is the sort of fellow whose manners carry him through with every one. The old Dean vows there is no one

like him."

"The deuce he does!" exclaimed Dick; "I shouldn't have thought he was at all the sort of fellow the Dean would care about. The Dean is such a dreadful old stick. Oh, by Jove! I hope I haven't said the wrong thing. I quite forgot that the Dean might be a friend of yours," and he looked rather anxiously at his host.

"Well, yes, he is a friend of mine as it happens," said Tom

"a very dear friend, too. is a very abusive term. don't mean much to me.

But I don't know that 'old stick' I use it myself pretty often, and it But what is wrong with the Dean?

Have you and he been coming to loggerheads?"

"We have not been coming, we have come, we are there, we live at loggerheads-in fact, I think, we started there," confessed Dick, laughing, and with a little encouragement from M'Gregor he went on to give a full and fairly accurate account of his many quarrels, not only with the Dean, but with sundry other people in authority. Tom shouted with laughing over the story of the fracas with Carr, and treated that little grievance of Lewis's as an excellent joke, though he had heard the whole story even better told before. But on the subject of the Dean he fairly joined issue with his guest, telling him a few plain truths, which caused the young gentleman first to wonder, then to doubt, and finally to look not a little foolish.

"Carr is an ass," Tom pronounced with decision. "Perhaps it is a pity that you quarrelled with him, as I don't much hold with quarrelling myself, but Carr is an ass all the same, though I do not believe that he is a bad fellow at bottom. Lewis is a crusty bit of goods, but honest. If you leave him alone, he will leave you alone, but you must not expect a man to be best pleased when you have done your best to spoil his temper and his clothes. But the Dean, we can't have you quarrelling with the Dean. It is like hitting a woman or shooting a sitting hen to be at loggerheads with as good and kind-hearted an old man as ever stepped. Of course it is all nonsense about out-college friends, but it is part of the old man's creed to believe that all the good men in Oxford congregate in St Hilary's. I wish they did, but they don't; still it is a comfortable idea for an old man with his heart and soul in the good of the College to think that they do. But come now, how about those chapels. What did he say when you told him that you had broken your arm? He must have said something."

"He never said a word. I don't think that I told him that I had broken my arm in so many words, but of course he

K

must have seen that I was smashed when I had my arm in a

sling."

"Must have seen it!

Never told him!

Pray, how the devil did you expect him to see it?" exclaimed Tom. "Why, anybody with half an eye must have seen that I had my arm in a sling," reiterated the other.

"Anybody with half an eye!" repeated Tom in high disdain; "why, man alive, the Dean hasn't got half an eye, or a quarter either. I give you my word of honour that the poor old man has not seen beyond the end of his nose, or at any rate the end of his spoon and fork, for the last six years. He is as blind as a bat and as unobservant as-as the devil." His Satanic Majesty was so evidently invoked in default of a better example, that Tom, having so invoked him, pulled up short, and the two men burst out laughing in company.

"Odd thing one has to fall back on the devil, though from all accounts he is the last party to be unobservant," said Tom, by way of apology to Dick Loder and the devil at the same time; and having thus made the amende honorable to the latter for apparently misjudging him, he took up his parable again. and made a few points clearer to the former.

"Now, don't you go and make any mistake about it, Loder; I am talking about things that I know and a man I know, and I tell you that there is not a more kind-hearted and gentle old man living than the Dean, and I can't have you quarrelling with him. He is just as good as he is unobservant, and we both know," smiling as he spoke, "how much that is. I can only tell you that the very best fellow we ever had in St Hilary's, or in Oxford either for the matter of that, George Ronald, swore by the Dean, and the Dean swore by him. Of course here there has been a misunderstanding all through, and you will allow me to say that you misunderstood the Dean at least as much as he misunderstood you. If he seemed to make no allowance for your having had an accident, you made no allowance for his blindness, which prevented his seeing that you were crippled. And then probably you got your back

up, which I will bet he did not, and then came ructions. However, we'll put that right very shortly. You may kick Carr, and snowball Lewis round the quad, for all I care, but I am not going to have you quarrelling with my Dean."

A misplaced or inappropriate expression has occasionally been known to produce unexpected results, and it is a curious fact that from the moment that Tom M'Gregor claimed so strong a personal interest in the Dean of St Hilary's as even to speak of that official as if he were his own personal property, Dick Loder, who at this early age of acquaintanceship had arrived at the conclusion that his host was a thoroughly sound fellow, did then and there make up his mind that there must be undiscovered merits about the Dean which had as completely escaped his notice as the fact of his having broken his arm had evidently escaped the Dean. The upshot of this conversation, it may by anticipation be said, was that two days later the Dean, having in the interim been visited by Tom M'Gregor, and by that gentleman put into possession of certain facts and circumstances hitherto unknown to him, indited to Dick Loder so frank and kindly a letter of apology that the young scholar hardly knew how to answer it. And one expression in particular, "You will pardon an old man's blindness," not only confirmed the recipient's opinion of the soundness of M'Gregor's reasoning, but having about it a slight ring of pathos as well as of truth, had such an effect upon Dick that, albeit seldom given to use strong language, he fairly astonished Chetwynde, who was breakfasting in his room at the time, by suddenly exclaiming, "Well, I have made a pretty good d-d fool of myself."

"Try another, old chap," responded Chetwynde, who, being at the moment buried in the 'Sportsman,' jumped to the rash conclusion that Dick must have tackled a more than usually bad egg by mistake.

Later on, when Chetwynde strolled off to a lecture, Dick spent a good hour in writing and rewriting an answer to the Dean, and finally, not entirely satisfied that his own composition on the occasion came up to the necessary standard, he