room, began
to feel very much ashamed of himself. He recognized the poverty that
stood in the background of this splendid "college career" of Percy or
Clarence or whatever other name of feudal magnificence had been awarded
to counterbalance "Smithers." No doubt the champagne in gradual reaction
was over-charging him with sentiment, but observing in turn each tribute
from home that adorned with a pathetic utility this bleak room dedicated
for generations to poor scholars, Michael felt very much inclined to
detach himself from the personal ragging of Smithers and go to bed. What
seemed to him in this changed mood so particularly sad was that on the
evidence of his books Smithers was not sustained by the ascetic glories
of learning for the sake of learning. He was evidently no classical
scholar with a future of such dignity as would compensate for the
scraping and paring of the past. To judge by his books, he was at St.
Mary's to ward off the criticism of outraged Radicals by competing on
behalf of the college and the university in scientific knowledge with
newer foundations like Manchester or Birmingham. Smithers was merely an
advertisement of Oxford's democratic philanthropy, and would only gain
from his university a rather inferior training in chemistry at a
considerably greater personal cost but with nothing else that Oxford
could and did give so prodigally to others more fortunately born.

At this point in Michael's meditations Smithers woke up, and from the
bedroom came a demand in startled cockney to know who was there. The
reformers were just thinking about their reply, when Smithers, in a long
nightgown and heavy-eyed with sleep, appeared in the doorway between his
two rooms.

"Well, I'm jiggered!" he gasped. "What are you fellers doing in my
sitting-room?"

It happened that Cuffe at this moment chose to take down from the wall
what was probably an enlarged portrait of Smithers' mother in order to
examine it more closely. The son, supposing he meant to play some trick
with it, sprang across the room, snatched it from Cuffe's grasp, and
shouting an objurgation of his native Hackney or Bermondsey, fled
through the open window into the deer-park.

Cuffe's expression of dismay was so absurd that everybody laughed very
heartily; and the outburst of laughter turned away their thoughts from
damaging Smithers' humble property and even from annoying any more
Smithers himself with proposals for his reformation.

"I sa