The appearance of the Warden might have surprised any one, but it could have impressed nobody. You had to know that he was a Warden, and wrote books about religion and philosophy, before you could feel afraid of him. If he was a precisian in the choice of words, he certainly was not one in the matter of dress.
"I think," he said, with just a glance at me to see if I was the right man, "that we will enter the Parks by the gates opposite to Keble College; we shall be more or less interrupted by the noisy, if necessary, shouts of football players, but we shall escape the authoritative note of the bicycle bell."
There wasn't much that I could say in answer to this, so I walked down the Broad in silence, and tried in vain to keep step with my companion. Before we had reached Wadham his shuffle had got upon my nerves, and I wished furiously that he would say something to me. He seemed to have tucked his head into his neck, and to have retired into the world of contemplation. As we entered the Parks I was seized with a wild desire to run away. I had not uttered a word, and I had arrived at a state of mind which prompted me to give a terrific yell, just to see what would happen next. When I feel like that I must speak at least, so I said that it looked as if it might rain. It is not likely that I should have made such a remark if I could have thought of any other, and it had the merit of not being startling and also of being true. But if I had given the yell which I wished to give, I could not have produced a greater effect upon the Warden. I think that he had forgotten my existence, and for a moment he could not remember why I was with him. He poked his head forward, and looked at me until I regretted my effort at conversation, and was dreadfully afraid I should have to repeat it; a remark about the weather in some way or other seems to lose all its sparkle when it is repeated.
The Warden, however, had heard what I said, and when he had detached himself from whatever he was thinking about, he answered me.
"I am not one of those who pretend to any extraordinary knowledge of weather symptoms," he began, and he stood in the middle of the path, while a gardener leant on his spade and watched us; "indeed, I have often noticed that those who make the greatest pretensions of that kind are themselves most frequently mistaken. In fact, my friend Dr. Marshall, who wrote the meteorological reports for The Times newspaper, was frequently himself in doubt whether or no to take out an umbrella for a walk."
I did not venture to interrupt him again for some time, and my next outbreak was quite unpremeditated. We were passing a college rugger match, and a pass which was palpably forward escaped the notice of the referee. I joined in the cry of "forward" which was raised, and the Warden stopped once more and actually smiled. On this occasion I had forgotten all about him, and my shout probably surprised him as much as me.
"I am sorry," I said to him, "but I really couldn't help it."
"There is no occasion to express or even to feel regret," he answered, and his eyes twinkled delightfully; "if youth lost its spontaneity it would at one and the same moment lose its charm. Did your cry refer to this?" He pointed with his umbrella to a scrimmage which was taking place a few yards away from us.
"Some one threw the ball forward, which he is not allowed to do," I explained, and a man was hurled into touch close to the spot where we were standing.
"The game of football which I believe bears the honoured name of Rugby appeals, or it seems to me to appeal, to the more violent of the emotions. Do you play this game, which strikes the eye of the observant, but not initiated, as the relic of an age in which brute force rather than science was the aim of the athlete?"