"Is my name down for it?"
"No."
"And why not, pray?"
"I've only been there once since I came up."
"Put it down at once, then, and don't lose any more time about it. Minshull had never heard of the 'Pitt,' but I have learnt since I came up that all the best known people belong to it. And I should like to belong to the A.D.C. too."
"I daresay I can manage that for you. I'm on the committee now, and we are always very kind; but, look here, father, there's not the slightest chance of your belonging to the 'Pitt' or the A.D.C. either if you don't keep yourself in the background at first. And whatever made you knock the stuffing out of your cap like that? It's only the rowdies whom nobody respectable has anything to do with who go in for that sort of thing."
"Minshull told me that if you wore a new cap and gown everybody took you for a smug," said Mr. Binney.
"Minshull's a fool," said Lucius, with withering scorn. "You'd better take my advice about things like that, not his. And I should buy myself a new cap if I were you."
A few days after, Dizzy gave a dinner. Most of his guests had arrived and were discussing the vagaries of Mr. Binney, who by this time had become a public character, when Blathgowrie arrived in a state of some perturbation.
"I say, you fellows," he said, as he came in. "This business will have to be stopped. I've had that little bantam in my rooms since seven o'clock. I'm not going to stand it."