y
Mrs. Faulkner would criticize my taste until we separated.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SCHEMES OF DENNISON

My life for several days after Nina went away was just what I expected
it would be. Everybody I knew wanted to be told about the accident,
and congratulated me on her narrow escape. I was gloriously rude to
several men, but nothing I could do was really any good. The first man
at whom I let myself go was Dennison, and in this I made a very great
mistake, because in letting him know that I was sick of the whole
business I gave him a chance which he did not miss. He went round
finding men who had not seen me, and persuaded them to come to me and
say how sorry they had been to hear of the accident, and how glad they
were that Jack Ward had saved Nina, and a lot of other desperate
twaddle. Finally, Dennison having worked this joke most diligently,
decided that a dinner must be given in Jack's honour, and when he met
me in the quad on Sunday and told me about it I refused flatly to go.

"Of course you will come," he said, "it would be a disgrace to the
college if we didn't do something to celebrate Ward's pluck and your
sister's escape."

"It is a disgrace to the college to make a wretched fuss about
nothing," I replied.

"You are the only man who thinks that. Next Thursday night, half-past
seven, at the Sceptre," he said, and walked off.

Ward and I had been avoiding each other ever since the Wednesday night,
when he having first of all been to Brasenose because they were Head of
the River and lively, came to see me afterwards and talked very
stupidly. I was in bed, and he woke me up to talk to me for over
half-an-hour about love. Any one would have been angry, and though I
tried to be polite, because he had jumped into the Cher, I told him to
go away several times before he went. I had never thought it possible
that I could have so much trouble about Nina. I suppose he knew that
he had made an idiot of himself that evening, for if there is any time
when it is decent to wake a man up and talk to him about wonderful
subjects, I am sure it can never be after a huge celebration at
Brasenose. I didn't know much about love, but I thought that there
must be the wrong and the right kind, and that Jack had made a bad
start.

So we kept out of each other's way as much as possible, and I did not
know that he hated the idea of this dinner even more than I did. We
might together have done something to stop it