hat was to effect the
birth of this undergraduate bantling.

"Though what exactly you want me to do," protested Michael, "I don't
quite know."

"We want money, anyway," Avery frankly admitted. "Oh, and by the way,
Michael, I've asked Goldney, the Treasurer of the O.U.D.S. to put you
up."

"What on earth for?" gasped Michael.

"Oh, they'll want supers. They're doing The Merchant of Venice. Great
sport. Wedders is going to join. I want him to play the Prince of
Morocco."

"But are you running the Ouds as well as The Oxford Looking-Glass?"
Michael inquired gently.

In the end, however, he was persuaded by Avery to become a member, and
not only to join himself but to persuade other St. Mary's freshmen,
including Lonsdale, to join. The preliminary readings and the rehearsals
certainly passed away the Lent term very well, for though Michael was
not cast for a speaking part, he had the satisfaction of seeing
Wedderburn and Avery play respectively the Princes of Morocco and
Arragon, and of helping Lonsdale to entertain the professional actresses
who came up from London to take part in the production.

"I think I ought to have played Lorenzo," said Lonsdale seriously to
Michael, just before the first night. "I think Miss Delacourt would have
preferred to play Jessica to my Lorenzo. As it is I'm only a gondolier,
an attendant, and a soldier."

Michael was quite relieved when this final lament burst forth. It seemed
to set Lonsdale once more securely in the ranks of the amateurs. There
had been a dangerous fluency of professional terminology in "my
Lorenzo."

"I'm only a gondolier, an attendant, and a mute judge," Michael
observed.

"And I don't think that ass from Oriel knows how to play Lorenzo,"
Lonsdale went on. "He doesn't appreciate acting with Miss Delacourt. I
wonder if my governor would be very sick if I chucked the Foreign Office
and went on the stage. Do you think I could act, if I had a chance? I'm
perfectly sure I could act with Miss Delacourt. Don't forget you're
lunching with me to-morrow. I don't mind telling you she threw over a
lunch with that ass from Oriel who's playing Lorenzo. I never heard such
an idiotic voice in my life."

Such conversations coupled with requests from Wedderburn and Maurice
Avery to hear them their two long speeches seemed to Michael to occupy
all his leisure that term. At the same time he enjoyed the rehearsals in
the lecture rooms at Christ Church, and he enjoyed escaping