ed,"
and which, I should think, are a great waste of money. In addition to
this bother which I manufactured more or less for myself, I had another
trouble which did not worry so much because I understood it better.
Mrs. Faulkner had told my mother, quite privately, that I was in her
opinion doing very little work at Oxford, and my mother was not as
disturbed at this as her informant thought she ought to have been. At
least I suppose that must have been the reason why Mrs. Faulkner told
my father the same tale, and even took the trouble to show him some of
the papers which were in that wretched parcel. I could not expect him
to approve of all those papers, and I did not dare to tell him that I
had not chosen them myself, because he would then have accused me of
laziness and extravagance and a whole host of unpleasant things, so I
accepted his rebukes with a contrite spirit and wrote and told him,
quite truthfully, that I read very serious papers nearly every week.
But when you have been fairly caught buying a host of sporting and
theatrical literature, it isn't much good trying to persuade your
father that it was a fluke. I sent him _The Spectator_ soon
afterwards, but he never acknowledged it, and my mother in her next
letter drew my attention to the fact that he had subscribed to this
review for the last seven years. My luck was very bad just then, I
seemed unable to do anything right.

There was only one thing which cheered me up, and it was that Owen had
got over the worst part of his illness. But I could not even think of
this without being bothered, for when a man is ill you don't mind
promising to do anything, and it is only when he is getting better that
you begin to realize how much you have promised. It was certain that I
must pay the expenses of his illness, and it was equally certain that I
should not have enough money to pay my college bills as well; the whole
thing made me very pensive.

Murray was in my rooms one night just before the end of the term, and I
was talking over my difficulties, for he was always hard-up himself and
not likely to offer to lend me anything, when a note was brought in
from Fred, and the first thing which fell out of the envelope was a
cheque for fifty pounds. I did not know what to think of that, but the
note upset me altogether.

"Dear Godfrey," Fred wrote, "you told me some time ago that you were
hard up, so I am sending you a cheque in case you want it. My people