Michael and Lonsdale found out that to the list of guests they had established must be added the names of Maurice, Wedderburn and two freshmen who were already favorably reported through the college as good sportsmen.
Two evenings later, at seven o’clock, Michael, Maurice, Lonsdale, Wedderburn, and Grainger, bowed and starched, stood in Venner’s, drinking peach bitters sharpened by the addition of gin.
“The men have gone in to hall,” said Venner. “You ought to start round to the Warden’s lodgings at ten past seven. Now don’t be late. I expect you’ll have a capital dinner.”
“Champagne, Venner?” asked Lonsdale.
“Oh, bound to be! Bound to be,” said Venner. “The Warden knows how to give a dinner. There’s no doubt of that.”
“Caviare, Venner?” asked Maurice.
“I wouldn’t say for certain. But if you get an opportunity to drink any of that old hock, be sure you don’t forget. It’s a lovely wine. I wish we had a few dozen in the J.C.R. Now don’t go and get tipsy like some of our fellows did once at a dinner given by the Warden.”
“Did they, Venner?” asked everybody, greatly interested.
“It was just after the Transvaal war broke out. Only three or four years ago. There was a man called Castleton, a cousin of our Castleton, but a very different sort of man, such a rowdy fellow. He came out from the Warden’s most dreadfully tipsy, and the men were taking him back to his rooms, when he saw little Barnaby, a Science don, going across New quad. He broke away from his friends and shouted out, ‘there’s a blasted Boer,’ and before they could stop him, he’d knocked poor little Barnaby, a most nervous fellow, down in the wet grass and nearly throttled him. It was hushed up, but Castleton was never asked again you may be sure, and then soon after he volunteered for the front and died of enteric. So you see what comes of getting tipsy. Now you’d better start.”
Arm in arm the five of them strolled through Cloisters until they came to the gothic door of the Warden’s Lodgings. Up the Warden’s majestic staircase they followed the butler into the Warden’s gothic drawing-room where they shook hands with the great moon-faced Warden himself, and with Miss Crackanthorpe, who was very much like her brother, and nearly as round on a much smaller scale. They nodded to the Dean, mentally calculating how many roll-calls they were behind, for the Dean notwithstanding the geniality of his greeting had one gray eye that seemed unable to forget it belonged to the Dean. They nodded to Mr. Ardle, the Senior Tutor, who blinked and sniffed and bowed nervously in response. Fitzroy beamed at them: Smithers doubtfully eyed them. The two freshmen reputed to be good sportsmen smiled grateful acknowledgments of their condescension. Appleby waved his hand in a gesture of such bland welcome that Lonsdale seemed to gibber with suppressed mortification and rage.