"Thoroughly?" said Jack; "I should think I did. I fairly licked the old man's boots. We had quite an affecting scene. I rather think he gave me his blessing, and I went away feeling that I had been almost recommended to repeat my performance. Gretton's a sensible man. This is a good College. The thing would have been mismanaged anywhere else; but now I have not only an unblemished character, but I am like gold tried in the furnace."
"One more thing," said Howard; "why not get your people to come up for two or three days? It will clear off the whole affair. I think they would like to be asked, and I should be very glad to help to look after them."
"It will be a bore," said Jack, making a grimace; "it wrecks my health to take people round to King's and Trinity. It simply knocks me up; but I expect you are right, and I will ask them. You won't fail me? When I go off duty, you will go on? If that is clearly understood, they shall come. I know Maud would like to realise my background, as she says; and my father will rush to the 'Varsity Library, and break the spirit of the Pemmer Dons. He'll have the time of his life; but he deserves a treat—he really wrote me a very decent letter. By George, though, these emotional experiences are not in my line, though they reveal the worth of suffering, as the Chaplain said in his Hospital Sermon last Sunday."
Howard wrote a further note, saying that he hoped that Mr. Sandys and Maud would be able to come; and it was soon arranged that they should spend the inside of a week at Cambridge, before the May week, as the Vicar said he had little taste for social pleasures, and had some matters of considerable importance to turn up in the Library, to say nothing of the intellectual stimulus he anticipated.
XVI
THE VISIT
THE visit began on the usual lines of such visits, the home team, so to speak—Howard and Jack—having to fit a round of festivities into a life which under normal circumstances was already, if anything, too full, with the result that, at all events, Howard's geniality was tense, and tended to be forced. Only in youth can one abandon oneself to high spirits; as one grows older one desires more to contemplate one's own mirth, and assure oneself that it is genuine.
Jack met them at the station, and they had tea in his rooms, Howard refusing firmly to come.
"You must just give them a chance of a private word or two!" he said.