day
evening. What shall I do?"

"Nothing," said Michael.

"I was really horribly worried, you know, and I think I rather jumped at
the opportunity to get the beastly business off my chest, as a sort of
joke."

"Come and dine at the Palace of Delights this evening," Michael invited.
"And tell Frank Castleton to come."

"We can't afford to be critical during the last fortnight of jolly old
Two Hundred and Two," said Michael to Lonsdale and Grainger, when they
received rather gloomily at first the news of the invitation.

Maurice in the course of the evening managed to reinstate himself. He so
very divertingly drew old Wedders on the subject of going down.

The last week of the summer term arrived, and really it was very
depressing that so many Good Eggs were irrevocably going to be lost to
the St. Mary's J.C.R.

"I think my terminal dinner this term will have to be the same as my
first one," said Michael. "Only twice as large."

So they all came, Cuffe and Sterne and Sinclair and a dozen more. And
just because so many of the guests were going down, not a word was said
about it. The old amiable ragging and rotting went on as if the college
jokes of to-night would serve for another lustrum yet, as if Two Hundred
and Two would merely be empty of these familiar faces for the short
space of a vacation. Not a pipe was gone from its rack; not a picture
was as yet deposed; not a hint was given of change, either by the
material objects of the big room or by the merry and intimate community
that now thronged it. Then the college tenor was called upon for a song,
and perhaps without any intention of melancholy he sang O Moon of My
Delight. Scarcely was it possible even for these Good Eggs, so rigidly
conscious of each other's rigidity, not to think sentimentally for a
moment how well the turning down of that empty glass applied to them.
The new mood that descended upon the company expressed itself in
reminiscence; and then, as if the sadness must for decency's sake be
driven out, the college jester was called upon for the comic song whose
hebdomadal recurrence through nine terms had always provoked the same
delirious encore. Everything was going on as usual, and at a few minutes
to midnight Auld Lang Syne ought not to have been difficult. It had been
sung nearly as often as the comic song, but it was shouted more
fervently somehow, less in tune somehow, and the silence at its close
was very acute. Twelve o'clock was soundi