y one can begin to go in occasionally in one's
third term."

"What is Venner's?" Michael asked.

"Don't you know?" sniffed the dumpy Etonian who had already managed to
proclaim his friendship with Marjoribanks, the President of the Junior
Common Room, and therefore presumably had the right to open his mouth a
little wider than usual at Michael.

"I'm not quite sure myself," said Lonsdale quickly. "I vote that Cuffe
explains."

"I'm not going to explain," Cuffe protested, and for some minutes his
mouth was tightly closed.

"Isn't it just a sort of special part of the J. C. R.?" suggested the
smiling Wykehamist, who seemed to wish to make it pleasant for
everybody, so long as he himself would not have to admit ignorance. "Old
Venables himself is a ripper. They say he's been steward of the J. C. R.
for fifty years."

"Thirty-two years," corrected Wedderburn in his voice of most
reverberant certitude. "Venner's is practically a club. You aren't
elected, but somehow you know just when you can go in without being
stared at. There's nothing in Oxford like that little office of
Venner's. It's practically made St. Mary's what it is."

All the freshmen, sipping their port and lolling back in their new
gowns, looked very reverent and very conscious of the honor and glory of
St. Mary's which they themselves hoped soon to affirm more publicly than
they could at present. Upon their meditations sounded very loud the
blast of a coach-horn from above.

"That's Templeton-Collins," said Michael.

"Who's he?" several demanded.

"He's the man who used to live in these rooms last year," said Lonsdale
lightly, as if that were the most satisfactory description for these
freshmen, as indeed for all its youthful heartlessness it was.

"Let's all yell and tell him to shut up that infernal row," suggested
Wedderburn sternly. Already from sitting in an armchair at the head of a
table of freshmen he was acquiring an austere seniority of his own.

"To a second-year blood?" whispered somebody in dread surprise.

"Why not take away the coach-horn?" Lonsdale added.

However, this the freshmen were not prepared to do, although with
unanimity they invited Templeton-Collins to refrain from blowing it.

"Keep quiet, little boys," shouted Templeton-Collins down the stairs.

The sixteen freshmen retreated well pleased with their audacity, and the
long-legged Wykehamist proclaimed delightedly that this was going to be
a hot year. "I vote we