he was at home and realised how very much in earnest Mr. Binney was, the dark fate that hung over him became less remote, and filled him with gloomy forebodings. But youth is elastic. It seemed almost out of the question that Mr. Binney would succeed in passing the entrance examination, while Lucius himself was already admitted a member of Trinity College. The allowance his father had named seemed to him quite adequate, and he allowed himself to cheer up a little and inquire after the health of Mrs. Higginbotham.
Mr. Binney coughed in some little embarrassment.
"Mrs. Higginbotham has a bad cold," he said, "and is confined to the house. I hope she will be well enough to accompany me to Lord's for the Eton and Harrow match, if the state of her bronchial tubes, which are giving her a lot of trouble just now, permit of it. You will be able to introduce us to some of your friends and future companions at Cambridge."
"I'm very sorry," said Lucius, "but I shan't be there. Henley comes in the same week."
"I shall be at Henley as well," said Mr. Binney, "and Mrs. Higginbotham has kindly consented to accompany me. She takes a great interest in your rowing career, Lucius, as she does in every other manly sport. Ah! I hope the day may come when I myself—but we mustn't count our chickens before they are hatched, must we? With regard to Henley, you will be able to go about with us, I suppose, and see that——"
"Very sorry, father," interrupted Lucius hastily, "I shall be rowing nearly all day long. We're in for the Grand and the Ladies' Plate. Besides, the captain of the boats is a terrible fellow. If he caught one of us so much as speaking to a lady he'd cut up very rough."
"Why is that, pray?" inquired Mr. Binney.
"Oh, I don't know. They might offer us an ice or something. We have to be awfully strict, you know, over training."
"Ah, well, that's a pity. Mrs. Higginbotham would like to meet a few of the young fellows who will be my companions for the next three years. She said so. Perhaps you might get one of your cricketing friends who would be unoccupied to look after us."
"I'm afraid most of them will have people of their own to look after. However, if any of them happens to lose his father and mother between now and Henley, I'll see what can be done."
"And now I must go to bed," said Mr. Binney, "so as to begin work early to-morrow morning. I don't want to lose a minute more than I can help. I'm not getting on terms with Mr. Plato as quickly as I should like. I shall be able to introduce you to Minshull before you start, Lucius. He's a good chap, and not a bit stand-offish as you might expect, considering he's a B.A., and I'm not even a freshman yet. You'll find him quite easy to get on with."
Minshull was one of those people in whose eyes a three years' residence at Oxford or Cambridge is such a glorious thing, that if they have gone through it themselves they can talk or think of nothing else throughout their lives. The healthy pleasant life of the average undergraduate is idealised into a sort of seventh heaven, and a "blue" takes his place immediately below the archangels and considerably above any mere mortal. Seniority of residence forms an almost complete bar to social intercourse with undergraduates of lower standing, and the little code of etiquette invented to enliven proceedings in the lesser colleges is as the laws of the Medes and Persians. To be or to have been "a 'Varsity man" was the only thing quite necessary in Minshull's eyes, if you were to call yourself a gentleman, and he therefore saw nothing that was not entirely laudable in Mr. Binney's determination to acquire this hall-mark of superiority, however late in life. While trying to instil into his pupil the requisite amount of Latin and Greek, he imparted to him at the same time his own particular point of view in matters of undergraduate custom, taught him what to admire and what to avoid, until Mr. Binney was infused with the spirit of a provincial youth about to enter the gates of the University paradise from his country grammar school. Mr. Binney had first of all considered a belated career at Cambridge as an opportunity for mending a defective education; under the encouragement of Mrs. Higginbotham's yearnings after vanished delights he had come to look upon it as a means of gaining some of the prestige of golden youth; influenced by Minshull's complacent reverence, he had insensibly drifted away from the careless acquiescence with which Lucius, for instance, regarded his own proposed residence at the University, and now felt that he should break his heart if he was prevented from taking his part in the glamorous delights which his tutor held before his eyes. He made herculean efforts to get on terms with his examination subjects, and worked harder than he had ever done in his life before.
Minshull arrived at nine o'clock the next morning as usual. Mr. Binney, who had been working since seven and had breakfasted at eight, had not yet returned from a short constitutional, and Lucius had the privilege of an interview with his father's tutor.
Minshull was a tall young man, rather shabbily dressed, with a long solemn face diversified by little ranges of spots of an eruptive tendency. He greeted Lucius with some respect, for Lucius was a potential "blue," and Minshull would have been as incapable of keeping on his hat in church as of talking without due reverence to a "blue."
"How's the governor getting on with his work?" asked Lucius with an abashed snigger.
"Oh, pretty well," replied Minshull. "He works very hard, but of course he has to do everything from the beginning."
"No chance of his getting through, I suppose?" said Lucius.
"Oh, I don't know," said Minshull. "If he works as hard as he has been doing so far for the next three months he may just be able to scrape through in October."
Lucius began to pace the room.
"If he gets into Trinity I won't go up, that's flat," he said.
"What! Not go up to the ''Varsity' when you've got a chance!" exclaimed Minshull. "My dear fellow, you don't know what you're talking about. You will regret it all your life if you don't."
"Look here," said Lucius, "you were at Cambridge, weren't you?"
"Yes, certainly," said Minshull, slightly offended. "I took my degree last year."
"Well, how would you have liked to have your old governor playing the fool up there at the same college?"
"I see no reason to suppose that Mr. Binney will play the fool," said Minshull stiffly. "I have put him up to everything he ought to know. He won't make mistakes. He is not likely to carry an umbrella with a cap and gown or anything of that sort."
"Why shouldn't he carry an umbrella if it rains? Look here, can't you make certain of his getting pilled for this examination?"
Minshull looked horrified. "What! and prevent his going up to the 'Varsity when he wants to?" he exclaimed.
"Or if you can't do that and he's likely to get through, tell him that you don't think much of Trinity, and get him to go somewhere else."
"There are plenty of good colleges in Cambridge besides Trinity," said Minshull, "although Trinity men don't seem to think so. My own college, for instance, Peterhouse, isn't big, but it is one of the best, if not the best of the smaller ones."
"Is it? Well then, get him to go there. Do you mean to say you don't think it's a beastly shame him wanting to come up and spoil all my time at Cambridge?"
"I can't see——" began Minshull, but just then Mr. Binney came in, and Lucius left them to their labours, with the uncomfortable conviction that the toils were closing in on him and that there was no help at any rate to be gained from his father's tutor.
Henley week came round in due course,
