g to me," he answered, "I was bowled about a
dozen times. Besides I wasn't asked to go on the 'Cher.'"

"Nina and Mrs. Faulkner said all sorts of things about me last night?"

"Who told you so?"

"They did."

"Sometimes Nina's temper isn't any better than yours," he said. "What
happened to you? How's Owen?"

"Owen is very bad," I answered, and while we had lunch I told him what
I had been doing. "In a few hours I have made a fool of myself three
times," I said, "I've promised to pay for Owen, and I have had rows
with both Edwardes and Dennison. This college is going to blazes, and
it is men like Edwardes, who is a great lump of ice, and Dennison, who
just wants to be a blood in his own miserable little way, who will be
responsible. Edwardes never cares what happens, and Dennison is
collecting a set round him who can do nothing but wear waistcoats, eat
and drink. You have all the luck in belonging to a college where men
don't become bloods by drinking hard, and where everybody takes an
interest in the place. St. Cuthbert's will never get a decent fresher
to come to it if we don't do something to make it alive again."

Fred stretched himself and yawned, all the life seemed to have gone out
of him in some way.

"You wouldn't like to belong to a college which has been something and
is on the road to be nothing," I said.

"It takes a lot to ruin a college," he answered; "every one knows that
St. Cuthbert's is a good enough place, and one man like Dennison won't
make much difference."

"Won't he? you don't know him as well as I do. He'd ruin the Bank of
England if he could be the only director for a year."

"But there are heaps of other men besides him."

"No one seems to care; we just live on our reputation, and when
Dennison is no longer a fresher he will wreck the whole place, he is
clever enough to do it."

"You are in a villainous temper and exaggerate everything," Fred said.

"You know that Oriel is all right, and you don't care what happens to
us," I retorted, and then Fred woke up and we very nearly had a
terrific row.

The remembrance of this day still makes me feel uncomfortable, and I am
quite certain that Fred was the only man in Oxford who could have put
up with me. I simply walked from quarrel to quarrel, and I seemed to
want each one to be more violent than the last. Now I come to think of
it, it is possible that Dennison's advice was sound; I must certainly
have needed something wh