“Why didn’t you ask Duncan Mackintosh to lunch, Arthur dear?” Lady Cleveden inquired.
“My dear mother,” said Arthur, “he’s quite impossible.”
“But Sir Hugh Mackintosh is such a charming man,” said Lady Cleveden, “and always asks us to stay with him when we’re in Scotland.”
“Yes, but we never are,” Lonsdale pointed out. “And I’m sorry to hurt your feelings, mother, about a relation of yours, but Mackintosh is really absolutely impossible. He’s the very worst type of Harrovian.”
Michael felt bound to support his friend by pointing out that Mackintosh was so eccentric as to dislike entertainment of any kind, and urged a theory that even if he had been asked, he would certainly have declined rather offensively.
“He’s not a very bonhomous lad,” said Lonsdale, and with that sentence banished Mackintosh for ever from human society.
After lunch the host supposed in a whisper to Michael that they ought to take his people out in a punt. Michael nodded agreement, and weighed down by cushions the party walked through the college to where the pleasure craft of St. Mary’s bobbed at their moorings.
Lonsdale on the river possessed essentially the grand manner, and his sister who had been ready to laugh at him gently was awed into respectful admiration. Even Lord Cleveden seemed inclined to excuse himself, if ever in one of the comprehensive and majestic indications of his opinion he disturbed however slightly the equilibrium of the punt. Lonsdale stood up in the stern and handled the ungainly pole with the air of a Surbiton expert. His tendency toward an early rotundity was no longer noticeable. His pink and cheerful face assumed a grave superciliousness of expression that struck with apologetic dismay the navigators who impeded his progress. Round his waist the rich hues of the Eton Ramblers glowed superbly.
“Thank you, sir. Do you mind letting me through, sir? Some of these toshers ought not to be trusted with a punt of their own.” This comment was for Michael and uttered in a voice of most laryngeal scorn so audible that the party of New College men involved reddened with dull fury. “Try and get along, please, sir. You’re holding up the whole river, sir. I say, Michael, this is an absolute novices’ competition.”
After an hour of this slow progress Lonsdale decided they must go back to college for tea, an operation which required every resource of sangfroid to execute successfully. When he had landed his father and mother and sister, he announced that they must all be quick over tea and then buzz off at once to see the first division row.