So finally, after one or two more protests from Stella, it was arranged that she should come up for Eights Week under the guardianship of Mrs. Ross.
Michael took care some time beforehand to incorporate a body of assistant entertainers. Lonsdale in consideration of Michael having helped him with his people for one day last year was engaged for the whole visit. Maurice was made to vow attendance for at least every other occasion. Wedderburn volunteered his services. Guy Hazlewood, who was threatened with Schools, was let off with a lunch. Nigel Stewart spoke mysteriously of a girl whose advent he expected on which account he could not pledge himself too straightly. Rooms were taken in the High. Trains were looked out. On Saturday morning Lonsdale and Michael went down to the station to meet Mrs. Ross and Stella.
“I think it was a very bad move bringing me,” said Lonsdale, as they waited on the platform. “Your sister will probably think me an awful ass, and ...”
But the train interrupted Lonsdale’s self-depreciation, and he sustained himself well through the crisis of the introductions. Michael thought Mrs. Ross had never so well been suited by her background as now when tall and straight and in close-fitting gray dress she stood in the Oxford sunlight. Stella, too, in that flowered muslin relieved Michael instantly of the faint anxiety he had conceived lest she might appear in a Munich garb unbecoming to a reserved landscape. It was a very peculiarly feminine dress, but somehow she had never looked more like a boy, and her gray eyes, as for one moment she let them rest wide open on the city’s towers and spires, were more than usually gray and pellucid.
“I say, I ordered a car to meet us,” said Lonsdale. “I thought we should buzz along quicker.”
“What you really thought,” said Michael, “was that you would have to drive my sister in a hansom.”
“Oh, no, I say, really,” protested Lonsdale.
“I’m much more frightened of you than you could ever be of me,” Stella declared.
“Oh no, I say, really, are you? But I’m an awful ass, Miss Fane,” said Lonsdale encouragingly. “Hallo, here’s the jolly old car.”
As they drove past the castle, Lonsdale informed Stella it was the county gaol, and when they reached the gaol he told her it was probably Worcester College, or more familiarly Wuggins.