in some ways,
but in others he was simply hopeless. He was not so absolutely
unapproachable as Mr. Edwardes, for although you had got to imagine for
all you were worth you could think of him as an "undergrad," but when
Murray and I tried to persuade ourselves that Mr. Edwardes had once
been only twenty years old we wasted our time, and Murray told me that
I was always trying to do impossible things.

Oxford, however, is a good place when you are only playing at summer,
and it is really splendid if you are lucky enough to have a fine May
and early June. I went back there full of enthusiasm, I meant to do a
hundred things, but I am afraid my programme was a little too full; to
carry it out successfully I required the co-operation of the Subby and
Mr. Edwardes, and no one but an enthusiast, or a fool, would have
thought he was likely to get it. My experiences with Mr. Edwardes
during my second term had been placidly uneventful, but they had been
gained by very great effort on my part, and they did not seem to have
been worth the effort, since my tutor was almost as great an iceberg at
the end of the term as he had been at the beginning. He could not
thaw, but I never found out that until I had spent many unsuccessful
interviews with him. I thought after going through one term without
offending him that I was what golfers, I believe, would call "one up,"
and I felt that it would be an easy matter to increase my score, but I
made a great mistake. Mr. Edwardes did not realize in the least that
cricket is a very important and tiring game. I told him frankly that I
wanted to enjoy myself during my first summer term, and that if my work
was neglected a little I hoped he would understand the reason. He
failed to understand it, and instead of being pleased with my candour,
he took up a sort of pouncing attitude. He was fairly on the look-out,
and when a don gets into that state it is not likely he is going to
watch for nothing.

In the freshers' match Foster and I were on opposite sides, which
seemed to me a very poor kind of arrangement even before we began, and
what I thought of it after the match was over is not worth saying. The
weather on the first day of the game was never intended for cricket,
and I have very rarely seen a nose glow quite so gorgeously as the
umpire who no-balled me twice in my first over. I actually began the
bowling, though I think the reason for this honour must have been that
Cross of Magd