er fellow,
but a very queer one."

"Why does he sit at that table!"

"He is one of our servitors; they all sit there together."

"Oh," said Tom, not much wiser for the information, but resolved
to waylay Hardy as soon as the hall was over, and highly
delighted to find that they were after all of the same college;
for he had already begun to find out, that however friendly you
may be with out-college men, you must live chiefly with those of
your own. But now his scout brought his dinner, and he fell to
with the appetite of a freshman on his ample commons.

CHAPTER III

A BREAKFAST AT DRYSDALE'S

No man in St. Ambrose College gave such breakfasts as Drysdale.
Not the great heavy spreads for thirty or forty, which came once
or twice a term, when everything was supplied out of the college
kitchen, and you had to ask leave of the Dean before you could
have it at all. In those ponderous feasts the most hum-drum of
the undergraduate kind might rival the most artistic, if he could
only pay his battle-bill, or get credit with the cook. But the
daily morning meal, when even gentlemen commoners were limited to
two hot dishes out of the kitchen, this was Drysdale's forte.
Ordinary men left the matter in the hands of scouts, and were
content with the ever-recurring buttered toasts and eggs, with a
dish of broiled ham, or something of the sort, with a marmalade
and bitter ale to finish with; but Drysdale was not an ordinary
man, as you felt in a moment when you went to breakfast with him
for the first time.

The staircase on which he lived was inhabited, except in the
garrets, by men in the fast set, and he and three others, who had
an equal aversion to solitary feeding, had established a
breakfast-club, in which, thanks to Drysdale's genius, real
scientific gastronomy was cultivated. Every morning the boy from
the Weirs arrived with freshly caught gudgeon, and now and then
an eel or trout, which the scouts on the staircase had learnt to
fry delicately in oil. Fresh watercresses came in the same
basket, and the college kitchen furnished a spitchedcocked
chicken, or grilled turkey's leg. In the season there were
plover's eggs; or, at the worst, there was a dainty omelette; and
a distant baker, famed for his light rolls and high charges, sent
in the bread--the common domestic college loaf being of course
out of the question for anyone with the slightest pretension to
taste, and fit only for the perquisite of scouts. The