“Why, whatever do you find to write about?” asked Venner. “But I suppose it’s amusing. I’ve often been asked to write my own life. What an idea! As if I had any time. I’m glad enough to go to bed when I get home, though I always smoke a pipe first. We had two men here once who brought out a paper. Chalfont and Weymouth. I used to have some copies of it somewhere. They put in a lot of skits of the college dons. The Warden was quite annoyed. ‘Most scurrilous, Venables,’ he said to me, I remember. ‘Most scurrilous.’” Venner chuckled at the remembrance of the Warden’s indignation.
“This is going to be a very serious affair, Venner,” explained somebody. “It’s going to put the world quite straight again.”
“Ho-ho, I suppose you’re one of these Radicals,” said Venner to the editor. “Dear me, how anyone can be a Radical I can’t understand. I’ve always been a Conservative. We had a Socialist come up here to lecture once in a man’s rooms—a great Radical this man was—Sir Hugh Gaston—a baronet—there’s a funny thing, fancy a Radical baronet. Well, the men got to hear of this Socialist coming up and what do you think they did?” Venner chuckled in anticipatory relish. “Why, they cropped his hair down to nothing. Sir Hugh Gaston was quite upset about it, and when he made a fuss, they cut his hair too, though it was quite short already. There was a terrible rowdy set up then. The men are very much quieter nowadays.”
The door opened as Venables finished his story, and Smithers came in to order rather nervously a tin of biscuits. The familiar frequenters of Venner’s eyed in cold silence his entrance, his blushful wait and his hurried exit.
“That’s a scholar called Smithers,” Venner explained. “He’s a very quiet man. I don’t suppose any of you know him even by sight.”
“We ragged him last term,” said Michael, smiling at his friends.
“He’s a bounder,” declared Avery obstinately.
“He hasn’t much money,” said Venner. “But he’s a very nice fellow. You oughtn’t to rag him. He’s very harmless. Never speaks to anybody. He’ll get a first, I expect, but there, you don’t think anything of that, I know. But the dons do. The Warden often has him to dinner. I shouldn’t rag him any more. He’s a very sensitive fellow. His father’s a carpenter. What a wonderful thing he should have a son come up to St. Mary’s.”
The rebuke was so gently administered that only the momentary silence betrayed its efficacy.
One day Michael brought Alan to be introduced to Venables, and it was a pleasure to see how immediately the old man appreciated Alan.