"Thanks," I said.
"You are on the wrong track," he went on, beginning to smile again, "the wretched school-boy notion of being sick to death when you are beaten at anything is all humbug here, the thing to do is to laugh whatever happens, and to-day you look as if you hadn't a laugh left in you."
"That's sitting up all night," Lambert said, "you can't laugh all day and night."
Then I told them that if they wanted to see the college perfectly useless at everything they must be the biggest fools in Oxford, and I appealed to Murray to support me, because Dennison never spoke to him if he could help doing so.
"It is much easier to laugh than it is to row," was all Murray said, and he went out of the room at once.
"That man's the most complete prig in the 'Varsity," Dennison declared, "and as long as a college has a lot of men like him in it nothing else matters. We don't want smugs here."
"Murray," I said solidly, "is neither a prig nor a smug, and as you have never said half-a-dozen words to him you can't possibly know anything about him."
"A smug is always labelled," he answered, "and that man looks one from his hat to his boots, don't you think so, Lambert?"
Of course Lambert thought so, and I, having already said much more than I intended, was just going to say a lot more, when a whole crowd of men came into the room and saved me from the impossible task of making Dennison believe that he could make a mistake.
I went back to my rooms and found Fred waiting for me, but from the way I banged my note-book on the table and threw my gown into a corner, I should not think that he expected me to be very pleasant. Fred, however, understood me, and it seems to me that I have always been very lucky in having one friend who never tried to make out that I was in a good temper when I was in a bad one. Some people when they suspect that you are angry ask silly little questions just to find out if their suspicious are true, but Fred always left me alone. He simply took no notice of me at all, and though that was very annoying, it was not half as bad as a string of questions or a lot of stupid remarks about things which I did not want to hear. I banged about the room tremendously, but Fred went on reading The Sportsman and waited for me to become fit to speak to.