wadays?" inquired Lord Cleveden
meditatively.

"No, no," Lonsdale assured him. "They've given up since the famous cook
died. Look here, we absolutely must buzz round St. Mary's. And our
creme caramel is a much showier sweet than anything they've got at the
House."

The tour of St. Mary's was conducted with almost incredible rapidity,
because Lonsdale knew so little about his own college that he omitted
everything except the J.C.R., the hall, the chapel, the buttery and the
kitchen.

"Why didn't you ask Duncan Mackintosh to lunch, Arthur dear?" Lady
Cleveden inquired.

"My dear mother," said Arthur, "he's quite impossible."

"But Sir Hugh Mackintosh is such a charming man," said Lady Cleveden,
"and always asks us to stay with him when we're in Scotland."

"Yes, but we never are," Lonsdale pointed out. "And I'm sorry to hurt
your feelings, mother, about a relation of yours, but Mackintosh is
really absolutely impossible. He's the very worst type of Harrovian."

Michael felt bound to support his friend by pointing out that Mackintosh
was so eccentric as to dislike entertainment of any kind, and urged a
theory that even if he had been asked, he would certainly have declined
rather offensively.

"He's not a very bonhomous lad," said Lonsdale, and with that sentence
banished Mackintosh for ever from human society.

After lunch the host supposed in a whisper to Michael that they ought to
take his people out in a punt. Michael nodded agreement, and weighed
down by cushions the party walked through the college to where the
pleasure craft of St. Mary's bobbed at their moorings.

Lonsdale on the river possessed essentially the grand manner, and his
sister who had been ready to laugh at him gently was awed into
respectful admiration. Even Lord Cleveden seemed inclined to excuse
himself, if ever in one of the comprehensive and majestic indications of
his opinion he disturbed however slightly the equilibrium of the punt.
Lonsdale stood up in the stern and handled the ungainly pole with the
air of a Surbiton expert. His tendency toward an early rotundity was no
longer noticeable. His pink and cheerful face assumed a grave
superciliousness of expression that struck with apologetic dismay the
navigators who impeded his progress. Round his waist the rich hues of
the Eton Ramblers glowed superbly.

"Thank you, sir. Do you mind letting me through, sir? Some of these
toshers ought not to be trusted with a punt of their own." T