"What luck?" asked everybody in the lodge when Michael had emerged from
the ordeal.

"I had rather a hot time," said Michael. "Still Harbottle behaved like a
gentleman on the whole."

Maurice arrived in the lodge soon after Michael, and conveyed the
impression that he had left the tutorial forces of the college reeling
under the effect of his witty cannonade. Then Michael went off to
interview the Dean in order to adjust the difficulty which had been
created by the arrears of his early rising. With much generosity he
admitted the whole seven abstentions, and was willing not merely to stay
up a week to correct the deficit, but suggested that he should spend all
the Easter vacation working in Oxford.

So it fell out that Michael managed to secure his fourth year, and in
the tranquillity of that Easter vacation it seemed to him that he began
to love Oxford for the first time with a truly intense passion and that
a little learning was the least tribute he could offer in esteem. It was
strange how suddenly history became charged with magic. Perhaps the
Academic Muse sometimes offered this inspiration, if one spent hours
alone with her. Michael was sad when the summer term arrived in its
course. So many Good Eggs would be going down for ever after this term,
and upon Two Hundred and Two High brooded the shadow of dissolution.
Alan again hovered on the edge of the Varsity Eleven, but a freshman who
bowled rather better the same sort of ball came up, and it seemed
improbable he would get his Blue. However, the disappointment was
evidently not so hard for Alan to bear nowadays. He was indeed becoming
gravely interested in philosophy, and Michael was forced to admit that
he seemed to be acquiring most unexpectedly a real intellectual grasp of
life. So much the better for their companionship next year in those
rooms in St. Giles' which Michael had already chosen.

The summer term was going by fast. It was becoming an experience almost
too fugitive to be borne, this last summer term at Two Hundred and Two.
Michael, Grainger, and Lonsdale had scarcely known how to endure some
offensive second-year men from Oriel being shown their room for next
year. They resented the thought of these Oriel men leaning out of the
window and throwing cushions at their friends and turning to the left to
keep a chapel at Oriel, instead of scudding down to St. Mary's on the
right. Wedderburn was always the one who voiced sentimentally the
unexpre