"Oh, well," said Howden, somewhat abashed, "we shan't be doing any harm. You must feed somewhere even if it is Sunday."
"I always dine in hall on Sunday," said Mr. Binney, "and go to church afterwards. I am sorry I can't join you, Howden, although, if it had been on any other night in the week, I should have been delighted. Those dinners we used to have were rather good fun, weren't they? I shouldn't mind another one now if we could keep it a bit quieter. I'll tell you what, Howden, we will have another dinner in my rooms to-morrow night; just to celebrate our going head."
"What, the old lot!" exclaimed Howden. "That will be ripping, Binney. I've never had such jolly dinners since I've been up here as yours were. You're such a capital good host, you know."
"Well, I like entertaining my friends," said Mr. Binney, much gratified. "I used to enjoy those dinners myself, but they certainly were getting rather too rowdy. We must keep a bit quieter to-morrow."
"Right you are," said Howden, and he and Mr. Binney drew out a list of half a dozen constellations of the athletic world, who had already had experience of Mr. Binney's hospitality in days gone by, and might be supposed to be willing to partake of it again.
Mr. Binney's dinner was a repetition of those which had brought him into disrepute during the previous term, only, instead of being quieter than had been customary with those entertainments, it was a noisier revel than any of them. Bumpers had to be drunk to the First Trinity Boat Club, and to the cox of its first Lent boat. This was done before the fish came on. By the time the entrée had made its appearance success to the University Rugby Football Club had been duly honoured, and the healths of the various members of it there present brought them to dessert in a state of hilarious good fellowship. Mr. Binney usually objected to bumpers, but it was pointed out to him that his refusal to empty them would be considered a cowardly insult to his guests in whose honour they were proposed.
Alas! before dinner was well over, Mr. Binney was in a state the mere imagination of which would have made him blush with shame in his more collected moments. His face was flushed, his speech thick, and his laughter meaningless but incessant. His guests were, most of them, in a similar state, and the unhappy little man, instead of mildly rebuking them for their excesses, as he had been accustomed to do, encouraged them to further libations, and filled their glasses himself with an unsteady hand, and giggling exhortations to make a night of it. At a later stage of the evening Mr. Binney was on his legs making the inevitable speech. It was an entirely incoherent speech, but his hearers applauded it no less for that. When a gleam of intelligence did detach itself from Mr. Binney's rambling procession of verbiage and pierce their heated brains, the cheers and hammerings on the table rose to fever pitch, and spurred on the poor little object to still greater exertions. During one of these interludes, when the applause was at its height and Mr. Binney stood leaning against the table with glassy eye and fatuous smile waiting for the din to subside, and bracing himself up for a further attempt, the door of the room opened, and a tall black figure, its face wearing an expression of scandalised amazement, stood framed in the door-way. It was the Reverend Dr. Toller come to expostulate with the wandering sheep of his otherwise irreproachable flock.
Mr. Binney was the first to notice him. He frowned slightly in a determined effort to regain his scattered senses. Then the amiable smile spread once more over his face as he recognised his friend.
"Dorrertoller!" he cried, in a delighted impulse of hospitable welcome. "Come in, my dear sir, and dring a glass o' wine. You see me, Dorrertoller, s'rounded by m' friends, celebrelating merrificent vickery, boclub. Genelmel, 'low me, ole friend, Dorrertoller. Come in, ole boy. Mayself tome. Siddown."
"Mr. Binney!" said the good doctor in an awful tone. "Are you aware, sir, of the terrible scandal you are bringing upon yourself and your friends by this unseemly—this disgraceful conduct?"