s; it's like owls coming out at night. You see, Miss Bretherton,
we don't keep many of them; they're in the way in term time. But in
vacation they have the colleges and the parks and the Bodleian to
themselves, and you may study their ways, and their spectacles, and their
umbrellas, under the most favourable conditions.'

'Oh yes,' said Miss Bretherton, with a little scorn, 'people always make
fun of what they are proud of. But I mean to believe that you are _all_
learned, and that everybody here works himself to death, and that Oxford
is quite, quite perfect!'

'Did you hear what Miss Bretherton was saying, Mrs. Stuart?' said Forbes,
when they were seated at luncheon. 'Oxford is perfect, she declares
already; I don't think I quite like it: it's too hot to last.'

'Am I such a changeable creature, then?' said Miss Bretherton, smiling at
him. 'Do you generally find my enthusiasms cool down?'

'You are as constant as you are kind,' said Forbes, bowing to her; 'I am
only like a child who sighs to see a pleasure nearing its highest point,
lest there should be nothing so good afterwards.'

'Nothing so good!' she said, 'and I have only had one little drive
through the streets. Mr. Wallace, are you and Mrs. Stuart really going to
forbid me sight-seeing?'

'Of course!' said Wallace emphatically. 'That's one of the fundamental
rules of the society. Our charter would be a dead letter if we let you
enter a single college on your way to the river to-day.'

'The only art, my dear Isabel,' said Mrs. Stuart, 'that you will be
allowed to study to-day, will be the art of conversation.'

'And a most fatiguing one, too!' exclaimed Forbes; 'it beats sight-seeing
hollow. But, my dear Miss Bretherton, Kendal and I will make it up to
you. We'll give you an illustrated history of Oxford on the way to
Nuneham. I'll do the pictures, and he shall do the letterpress. Oh! the
good times I've had up here--much better than he ever had'--nodding
across at Kendal, who was listening. 'He was too proper behaved to enjoy
himself; he got all the right things, all the proper first-classes and
prizes, poor fellow! But, as for me, I used to scribble over my
note-books all lecture-time, and amuse myself the rest of the day. And
then, you see, I was up twenty years earlier than he was, and the world
was not as virtuous then as it is now, by a long way.'

Kendal was interrupting, when Forbes, who was in one of his maddest
moods, turned round upon his ch