"I intend to do the thing well, and open a bottle of champagne. I daresay, now, champagne's a thing that's hardly known at Cambridge."
"That's what I told my wine merchant last term. He was rather annoyed."
"I don't object to a little jollification occasionally. I daresay you and I, Lucius—-for you shall do what I do—will become pretty well known up there by-and-bye."
"I dare say we shall," said Lucius with a sigh. And, indeed, it did not seem unlikely.
Before Lucius went back to Cambridge for the summer term, he made one last attempt to avert the catastrophe which had now become imminent—for Minshull had told him that Mr. Binney was now quite capable of passing the required test. He called on Mrs. Higginbotham, whose bronchial tubes had by this time become less ostentatious in their behaviour.
"Well, Lucius," said that lady, when he was seated opposite to her in her comfortable drawing-room, "you will soon have your dear father to look after you at college. It is not many young men who have a father so ready to share in all their little pleasures."
"No," said Lucius. "Don't you think you could stop him, Mrs. Higginbotham, if you tried?"
"Stop him!" exclaimed Mrs. Higginbotham with raised voice and hands. "My dear Lucius, do not tell me that you are so selfish as to be jealous of an excellent father."
"Jealous!" echoed Lucius. "I don't know what you mean."
"You do know what I mean, Lucius," said Mrs. Higginbotham severely. "And you are jealous. I can see it in your face. Here is your dear father continually talking to me with pride about the things you are doing at Cambridge, while you are only thinking of yourself, and fear that you will lose the position you have won when he is there to compete with you. What a contrast! You should be ashamed of such feelings, Lucius. I am sure I should be if I were in your place. What matter if you do have to take a lower place in the estimation of your young friends, when it is your own father—and such a father—who will replace you? I do not like to think of such behaviour."