their rooms,
and used their wines, horses, and other movable property as his
own. Being a good whist and billiard player, and not a bad
jockey, he managed in one way or another to make his young
friends pay well for the honour of his acquaintance; as, indeed,
why should they not, at least those of them who came to the
college to form eligible connexions; for had not his remote
lineal ancestor come over in the same ship with William the
Conqueror? Were not all his relations about the Court, as lords
and ladies in waiting, white sticks or black rods, and in the
innermost of all possible circles of the great world; and was
there a better coat of arms than he bore in all Burke's Peerage?

Our hero had met Drysdale at a house in the country shortly
before the beginning of his first term, and they had rather taken
to one another. Drysdale had been amongst his first callers; and,
as he came out of chapel one morning shortly after his arrival,
Drysdale's scout came up to him with an invitation to breakfast.
So he went to his own rooms, ordered his commons to be taken
across to No. 3, and followed himself a few minutes afterwards.
No one was in the rooms when he arrived, for none of the club had
finished their toilettes. Morning chapel was not meant for, or
cultivated by gentlemen-commoners; they paid double chapel fees,
in consideration of which, probably, they were not expected to
attend so often as the rest of the undergraduates; at any rate,
they didn't, and no harm came to them in consequence of their
absence. As Tom entered, a great splashing in an inner room
stopped for a moment, and Drysdale's voice shouted out that he
was in his tub, but would be with him in a minute. So Tom gave
himself up to contemplation of the rooms in which his fortunate
acquaintance dwelt; and very pleasant rooms they were. The large
room in which the breakfast-table was laid for five, was lofty
and well proportioned, and panelled with old oak, and the
furniture was handsome and solid, and in keeping with the room.

There were four deep windows, high up in the wall, with
cushioned seats under them, two looking into the large
quadrangle, and two into the inner one. Outside these windows,
Drysdale had rigged up hanging gardens, which were kept full of
flowers by the first nurseryman in Oxford, all the year round;
so that even on this February morning, the scent of gardenia and
violets pervaded the room, and strove for mastery with the smell
of