find in Oxford. Don't ask me to say what
they are, because I couldn't explain."

"I think you have a great capacity for idealization," said Mrs. Ross
gravely. "I wonder how you are going to express it practically. I wonder
what profession you'll choose."

"I don't suppose I shall choose a profession at all," said Michael.
"There's no financial reason--at any rate--why I should."

"Well, you won't have to decide against a profession just yet," said
Mrs. Ross. "And now tell me, just to gratify my curiosity, why you think
Stella's playing has deteriorated--if you really think it has."

"Oh, I didn't say it had," Michael contradicted in some dismay. "I
merely said that to-night it did not seem up to her level. Perhaps she
was anxious. Perhaps she felt among all these undergraduates, as I felt
in my first week. Perhaps she's thinking what schoolboys they all are,
and how infinitely youthful they appear beside those wild and
worldly-wise Bohemians to whose company she has been accustomed for so
long. I long to tell her that these undergraduates are really so much
wiser, even if literature means Mr. Soapy Sponge's Sporting Tour, and
art The Soul's Awakening, and religion putting on a bowler to go and
have a hot breakfast at the O.U.D.S. after chapel, and politics the
fag-ends of paternal or rather ancestral opinion, and life a hot bath
and changing after a fox-hunt or a grouse-drive."

Farther conversation was stopped by Wedderburn driving everybody down to
supper with pastoral exhortations in his deepest bass. Michael, after
his talk with Mrs. Ross, was relieved to find himself next to Lonsdale
and sheltered by a quivering rampart of jellies from more exacting
company.

"These Basutos aren't so bad when you talk to them," said Lonsdale.
"Comeragh was at m'tutor's. I wonder if he still collects bugs. I rather
like that man Hazlewood. I thought him a bit sidy at first, but he's
rather keen on fishing. I don't think much of the girl that Trinity
man--what's his name--Stewart has roped in. She looks like something
left over from a needlework stall. I say, your sister jolly well knows
how to punch a piano. Topping, what? Mossy's been very much on the spot
to-night. He and Wedders are behaving like a couple of theatrical
managers. Why didn't Alan Merivale turn up? I was talking to some of the
cricket push at the Club, and it doesn't look a hundred quid to a tanner
on his Blue. Bad luck. He's a very good egg."

Michael list