"What do you think is a good reason for sticking on side?" I asked.
"Ward can't do anything; you are a blue already, and I shall probably get my racquet blue, but of course that's got nothing to do with it."
"Then I shouldn't say anything about it," I answered, and putting on my coat I went into my sitter.
"Don't be a fool," he said as he followed me, "you stick so tremendously close to rotten old-fashioned ideas. I am not exactly committing a crime in not liking a man whom you profess to like."
"I have never professed to like any one in my life if I didn't like him," I returned, and instead of getting angry with me, he laughed and sat down in my biggest arm-chair. It was not his habit to have two quarrels going on at the same time, and when he wished to be amiable you had to work hard before you removed his smile. We had tea together, and I did work hard, but he refused to be offended, and told me that I was far too good a sort to be wrapped up in old prejudices, which were the laughing-stock of everybody who really thought about them. Oxford, he said, was the place for a good time and not for airing ridiculous fads which were all right at school, where there was nothing else to do but pretend to like a fellow for ever because you had happened to like him for a few weeks. And he also told me that being a blue, I ought to take my proper position in the college, and not to go about with men who were no use whatever.
In return I told him some beautifully plain things, but when a man has the terrific impudence of Dennison, he makes me too angry to be coherent. I let him know, however, that I intended to choose my own friends and that I thought a blue, if he was also a bounder, might do his college more harm than good. To which he replied that if a man was a bounder he found it exceedingly difficult to become a blue. When Dennison went away I rushed off to see Murray, and although he did not pretend to like Jack, he agreed with me that ten Wards in a college would not make it as unpleasant a place as one Dennison. After this attempt to get me on his side against Jack, Dennison left me more or less alone, but he smiled upon me whenever he saw me, and to Webb, Lambert and a man called Learoyd, who were at that time his particular friends, I believe that he described me as a lunatic who might be of use in the future.
I was very energetic during this term, and at the same time very quiet. The weather was so bad that astronomical people said that the sun had got spots upon it or had gone wrong somehow; at any rate we hardly ever saw it, and we lived in a deluge of rain. The Torpids had to be postponed, nearly every footer match was scratched, and the people who had been talking about water-famines for the last two years held their peace. Oxford seemed to be a most cheerless place, and Collier slept nearly the whole term. However, I most strenuously did labour, but I should never have stuck to it had not Murray helped me, and the result was that after we had been up five weeks I found myself in high favour with Mr. Gilbert Edwardes.
It is a dreadful thing to please your tutor if you do not happen to like him, because he asks you to breakfast by way of showing his pleasure, and at meals I could not put up with Mr. Edwardes. I sat next him at one breakfast, and he never ate anything except a piece of dry toast, and he talked about patent foods. I never saw a man who looked more as if he needed a really big meal of beef and plum-pudding; but he was an authority on diet, and told me that food if too nutritious was very bad for the brain. He could not, I thought, have imagined that our brains were worth much; for I must say that though he did not eat himself he gave us every chance of doing so, and if we had been the torpid, who breakfast and dine hugely, he could not have provided us with more food. Murray, who was one of many at this meal, seemed to be very interested in what Mr. Edwardes said about diet, and I told him afterwards that he was an arch-humbug; but it turned out that he had been bothered all his life—at least he said so—by indigestion, and that at Wellingham he had lived on some peculiar biscuit for nearly a fortnight, which recalled to my mind what Ward had said to me about him.
I played in all the 'Varsity rugger matches which were not scratched, and we finished up by beating the Wellingham Nomads after a muddy and desperate struggle. Murray was playing for the Nomads and Foster for the 'Varsity, and so many Wellingham people came round to Murray's rooms after the match that I had to hold a kind of overflow meeting in my rooms, after the manner of political gatherings. Murray was in great spirits until everybody had gone, and then he said he had got a most frightful attack of indigestion. So I let him talk it off. It was curious that I had known him so long without ever having got him on the subject of health; but he told me that when he came up to Oxford he made up his mind to forget all about his ailments and eat anything. I told him that he had better stick to that resolution, because I was sure that his best way was never even to think about himself, but that advice was not altogether unselfish. After he had spent a solid half-hour in telling me what pains he suffered, he seemed so much better that I was compelled to add that whenever he felt most awfully bad he had better come and talk to me. I did not say that from conceit but out of sympathy, and when he laughed I told him that if he thought it was amusing for me to hear about his pains and spasms he was jolly well mistaken.
"My father has talked about his liver for the last ten years," I said, by way of proving that whatever information he gave me about himself was bound to be stale.