improved,
Tommy?"

Tommy nodded.

"One day's done him no end of good."

"I say," Lonsdale offered, "you haven't met Fane. Mr. Fane--Mr.
Grainger. I was just saying to Fane that the Etonians are a rotten lot
this term."

"One or two are all right," Grainger admitted with evident reluctance.

"Well, perhaps two," Lonsdale agreed. "This dinner isn't bad, what?"

By this time the conversation at the table had become more general, and
Michael gradually realized that some of the alarm he had felt himself
had certainly been felt by his companions. Now at any rate there was a
perceptible relaxation of tension. Still the conversation was only
general in so much as that whenever anybody spoke, the rest of the
table listened. The moment the flow of his information dried up,
somebody else began pumping forth instruction. These slightly nervous
little lectures were delivered without any claim to authority and they
came up prefaced by the third person of legendary narrative.

"They say we shall all have to interview the Warden to-morrow."

"They say on Sunday afternoon the Wagger makes the same speech to the
freshers that he's made for twenty years."

"They say we ought to go head of the river this year."

"They say the freshers are expected to make a bonner on Sunday night."

"They say any one can have commons of bread and cheese by sending out
word to the buttery. It's really included in the two-and-fourpence for
dinner."

"They say they charge a penny for the napkin every night."

So the information proceeded, and Michael had just thought to himself
that going up to Oxford was very much like going to school again, when
from the second-year tables crashed the sound of a concerted sneeze. The
dons from high table looked coldly down the hall, expressing a vague,
but seemingly impotent disapproval, for immediately afterward that
sternutation shook the air a second time.

Michael thought the difference between school and Oxford might be
greater than he had supposed.

The slowest eater at the second freshmen's table had nervously left half
his savory; Wedderburn without apparent embarrassment had received the
Sub-Warden's permission to rise from dinner; Lonsdale hurriedly
marshaled as many of his acquaintances as he could, and in a large and
noisy group they swarmed through the moonlight toward his rooms.

Michael was interested by Lonsdale's sitting-room, for he divined at
once that it was typical, just a transplant