man may have as his family motto: 'In
Vino Suavitas'(Courteous though drunk, Boreham); but when you're drunk
and you still go on talking, don't you find the difficulty is not so
much to be courteous as to be coherent? In the good old drinking days of
All Souls, of which I am now an unworthy member, it was said that Tindal
was supreme in Common Room _because_ 'his abstemiousness in drink gave
him no small advantage over those he conversed with.'"

"Talk about supreme in Common Room," said Boreham, catching at the
opportunity to drive his dagger into the weak points of Oxford, "you
chaps, even before the war, could hardly man your Common Rooms. You're
all married men living out in the brick villas."

"Harding's married," said Bingham. "I'm thinking about it. I've been
thinking for twenty years. It takes a long time to mature thoughts. By
the by, was that a Miss Dashwood who sat next Harding? I don't think I
have ever met her in Oxford."

"She is a Miss Scott," said Boreham, suddenly remembering that he wanted
to join the ladies as soon as possible. He would get Bingham alone some
day, and squeeze him. Just now there wasn't time. As to Harding--he was
a hopeless idiot.

"Not one of Scott of Oriel's eight daughters? Don't know 'em by sight
even. Can't keep pace with 'em," said Harding.

"She's the daughter of Lady Belinda Scott," said Boreham, "and staying
with Lady Dashwood."

"I thought she didn't belong to Oxford," said Bingham.

Harding stared at his fellow Don, vaguely annoyed. He disliked to hear
Bingham hinting at any Oxford "brand"--it was the privilege of himself
and his wife to criticise Oxford. Also, why hadn't he talked to Miss
Scott? He wondered why he hadn't seen that she was not an Oxford girl by
her dress and by her look of self-satisfied simplicity, the right look
for a well-bred girl to have.

"I promised to show Mrs. Dashwood my house," said Boreham. "We mustn't
keep the ladies too long waiting. Shall we go?" he added. "Oh, sorry,
Harding, I didn't notice you hadn't finished!"

The men rose and went into the drawing-room. Harding saw, as he entered,
that his wife had discovered that Miss Scott was a stranger and she was
talking to her, while Mrs. Greenleafe Potten had got the Dashwoods into
a corner and was telling them all about Chartcote: a skeleton list of
names with nothing attached to them of historical interest. It was like
reading aloud a page of Bradshaw, and any interruption to such
e