the brisk coming and going, the clink and clatter below.
It was noisy indeed, but noisy as a healthy and friendly family party
is noisy, with no turbulence. Once or twice a great shout of laughter
rang out from the tables and died away. There was no sign of
discipline, and yet the whole was orderly enough. The carvers carved,
the waiters hurried to and fro, the swing-doors creaked as the men
hurried out. It was a very business-like, very English scene, without
any ceremony or parade, and yet undeniably stately and vivid.

The undergraduates finished their dinners with inconceivable rapidity,
and the Hall was soon empty, save for the more ceremonious and
deliberate party at the high table. Presently these adjourned in
procession to the Parlour, a big room, comfortably panelled, opening
off the Hall, where the same party sat round the fire at little tables,
sipped a glass of port, and went on to coffee and cigarettes, while the
talk became more general. Howard felt, as he had often felt before, how
little attention even able and intellectual Englishmen paid to the form
of their talk. There was hardly a grammatical sentence uttered, never
an elaborate one; the object was, it seemed, to get the thought uttered
as quickly and unconcernedly as possible, and even the anecdotes were
pared to the bone. A clock struck nine, and Mr. Redmayne rose. The
party broke up, and Howard went off to his rooms.

He settled down to look over a set of compositions. But he was in a
somewhat restless frame of mind to-night, and a not unpleasant mood of
reflection and retrospect came over him. What an easy, full, lively
existence his was! He seemed to himself to be perfectly contented. He
remembered how he, the only son of rather elderly parents, had gone
through Winchester with mild credit. He had never had any difficulties
to contend with, he thought. He had been popular, not distinguished at
anything--a fair athlete, a fair scholar, arousing no jealousies or
enmities. He had been naturally temperate and self-restrained. He had
drifted on to Beaufort as a Scholar, and it had been the same thing
over again--no ambitions, no failures, friends in abundance. Then his
father had died, and it had been so natural for him, on being elected
to a Fellowship, just to carry on the same life; he had to settle to
work at once, as his mother was not well off and much invalided. She
had not long survived his father. He had taught, taken pupils, made a
fair in