"Well, anything's better than nothing," Nina declared wisely, and so, to pacify her, I continued.
"These notices annoyed some men, so they dug a hole and bought a large sort of milk-pail arrangement to fit into it and a box of sardines. Then we filled the pail with water and put in the sardines, and Jack Ward put up a little notice, 'This fishing is reserved for the dons of the college. Licences may be obtained at the lodge.' The dons should not be so greedy about the garden," I added, because Mrs. Faulkner looked very disgusted.
"Did you really make a large hole in that beautiful turf?" she asked at once. "You began in the third person, but I expect you and this Mr. Ward did it; you ought to have been rusticated, or whatever the word is."
"We were never found out, and the dons didn't mind; they thought it not a bad joke of its kind," I answered.
"Then their sense of humour must have become perverted," she replied. "I think Mr. Ward must have a very bad influence over you."
Nina laughed and said she insisted upon meeting Jack.
"I sincerely hope you won't do anything of the kind," Mrs. Faulkner stated. "The dons must know what is best for the undergraduates, and such tricks are very unbecoming; I am sure my husband always admitted this when he was at Cambridge."
It was hardly fair to pull in Mr. Faulkner, so I said that I would get some tea, which put an end to the discussion, for I did not think it wise to say that I had asked Jack to meet Nina at luncheon on the following day. By the time we had finished tea Fred was tired of Mrs. Faulkner, and he slipped off with Nina in a way which was really too clever to be very nice. Mrs. Faulkner, however, was quite amiable, and she smiled on me steadily from the beginning of the Broad Walk to the end of it, which as a feat of endurance I feel it my duty to mention.
When we got down to the river the band was playing on the 'Varsity barge, and Mrs. Faulkner really began to enjoy herself. The flags flying from all the barges pleased her, and the smartness of the ladies made her compare the scene to church parade on a June morning in Hyde Park. I knew nothing about church parades and very little about Hyde Park, but I said that I thought this must beat anything in London. Then I got a chair for her and looked round to find Nina and Fred, but as I could not see them anywhere, I said that I must go and hunt for them. Mrs. Faulkner, however, had no intention of letting me go, and I had to be a kind of Baedeker for over half-an-hour. I was not a very good Baedeker, I confess, but I had found out that one way to make things uncomfortable with this lady was not to answer every question she asked, so I supplied her with a good deal of information which I sincerely hope she never passed on to any one else. Unfortunately our barge is near the 'Varsity's, and during the races a string of little flags fly from the 'Varsity barge to show the order of the colleges on the river. I knew them well enough down to ours, and I even knew the ninth and tenth, but when Mrs. Faulkner wanted to know the whole lot, I had to use my imagination. I know that I said Hertford twice and I finished up with All Souls, who only have about three undergraduates, so if they had rowed at all they would have been several men short.
"I should like to write the colleges down if I had a pencil," she said; "you rattle them off so fast. Didn't you say that one flag belonged to the University, but the University flag is surely dark blue?"