show Nina the beauties
of St. Cuthbert's while it was her duty to admire them. She had never
been inside an Oxford quadrangle before, and though I think any one
with two eyes and a grain of common-sense would say that Oxford is
beautiful, I must admit that Nina saw St. Cuthbert's for the first time
under the most favourable circumstances possible. She looked at the
old walls and the flower-boxes which were outside nearly all the
windows, and did not talk any nonsense about them; even the creepers
seemed to be greener than usual in the sunlight of the afternoon. In
the chapel somebody was playing the organ, which may have been a
meretricious effect, but it pleased Nina, and that was all I cared
about. The whole college was most wonderfully peaceful, no one could
imagine that the quadrangle had ever been made hideous by Bacchanalian
yells. And I felt proud of it, which was quite a new sensation to me,
and I suppose it was Nina's delight that made me see things
differently. I took her to my rooms, which seemed to be small and
gloomy enough after the hall and the quadrangle, but she said that they
were far more comfortable than she had expected them to be, and she sat
down in the most comfortable of my easy-chairs and looked as if she
intended to stop for ever. I suggested to her that we should go down
to the river and see Oriel struggling in the second division, but she
decided that one dose of racing would be enough for her, and said that
Fred could take Mrs. Faulkner to the river if she wanted to go. She
had not been so fond of my society for a long time, and for quite ten
minutes, with the aid of cherries, we got on splendidly together. Then
the conversation languished and I began to show her things which she
did not want to see; it is so very hard to please anybody who does not
pretend to like things which they do not like. Nina began to hum at
last, and if there is one noise which I detest it is humming. To make
matters worse her tune was one I especially disliked, but as I was her
host I made a gallant attempt not to listen to it. So I whistled, and
I expect we had nearly reached a crisis when Mrs. Faulkner and Fred
appeared. I was very fond indeed of Nina, and I am sure that she would
have been indignant if any one had told her that she was not fond of
me, but when we had not seen each other for some time and were left
alone together we often irritated each other. It was a terrible
nuisance, but it is