"Oh, Sylvia, do tell me about it! I won't say a word to anybody else."
But Sylvia, having said so much, would say no more; jumping up and insisting that she was thirsty, she reminded Dorothy that they had promised to help Charlie Clinton entertain his brother and some undergraduate friends. Charlie Clinton was an obscure member of the company who had suddenly sprung into considerable prominence by revealing that he had a brother at Oxford and was himself the black sheep of a respectable family. Dorothy, realizing that the blackest sheep is better form than the whitest goat, had accepted the invitation, but she was not much impressed by the collection of undergraduates gathered in his rooms, and was vexed that she had wasted her most becoming hat on young men who wanted to talk about nothing but music. She was vexed, too, at finding that David Bligh had been invited, and that he was talking affectedly about good music and sounding with his fluty voice rather like an undergraduate himself. Lily came and danced a classical dance which seemed to please everybody else, though Dorothy could not see anything in it. Bligh sang German songs, and was so much applauded that he condescendingly proposed that his pupil should sing, who refused so angrily that none of the undergraduates dared approach her. It was indeed a thoroughly boring evening, and she wondered if Oxford was going to produce nothing better than this.
The theater on Monday night, notwithstanding the fine weather, was packed; but the audience was noisy, and the men in the chorus who had not been invited to Charlie Clinton's party severely condemned the bad manners of undergraduates.
"They're a rowdy lot of bounders, that's what they are," Tom Hewitt proclaimed, loosening the collar around his aggressive neck.
Dorothy, who had been looking forward to astonishing some of the girls in the dressing-room with her news about Sylvia, forgot everything in a delightful triumph she was able to enjoy at the expense of Clarice Beauchamp. A note was brought round after the first act addressed:
To the fair artist's model in pink. Front row. O. P. side.
Clarice Beauchamp had the impudence to contest Dorothy's right to open this note, and while some of the artist's models were rapidly transforming themselves into Polynesian beauties and others as rapidly assuming the aristocratic costumes of a millionaire's yachting-party, Clarice and Dorothy, who belonged to the latter division, argued heatedly. At last Fay Onslow, to whom the note could not possibly refer, was allowed to open it and give her verdict:
Fair lady, my name is Lonsdale. On the Grampian hills my father feeds his flock! In other words, will you and the lady with the monocle who yesterday afternoon picked out quite the most unattractive man in St. Mary's as your guide come and picnic with me on the upper river to-morrow? A friend of mine at the House is dying to meet you, but he is much too shy to write himself. If you can come, just send back your address by bearer and I'll send my tame cab to fetch you to-morrow at twelve o'clock.
Yours sincerely,
ARTHUR LONSDALE.
"I knew it was for me," said Dorothy. "Sylvia and I were in St. Mary's College yesterday afternoon."