These words made tidying up an even simpler matter than usual, and the party started off.
Kink, it seems, had reached Oxford that morning, and was at the Green Man, where the Slowcoach was an object of extraordinary interest to the neighbourhood. They found him seated on the top step reading the paper, while forty-five children (at least) stared at him. Diogenes lay at the foot of the steps.
Kink was very glad to see them. No, he said, he hadn't had any adventures exactly, but driving a caravan was no work for a modest man who wished for a quiet life among vegetables.
"This," he said, waving his pipe at the increasing crowd, "is nothing. You should have see them at Beaconsfield and High Wycombe. They began by thinking I was Lord John Sanger, and when they were satisfied that I wasn't, they made sure I was a Cheap Jack with gold watches for a shilling each."
"How does it go, Kink?" Robert asked.
"It goes all right," said Kink, "but the crockery wants muffling. You can't hear yourself think when you trot."
"And Diogenes?"
"Diogenes," said Kink, "is a masterpiece. He begins to growl at tramps when they're half a mile away. Why is it, I wonder," Kink added, "that dogs can't abide ragged clothes? This Oxford, they tell me, is a clever place. I wonder if anyone here can explain that?"
Mr. Lenox's young brother and his friends had now to be shown the Slowcoach, which they pronounced "top hole," and then Moses was inspected in his stable; and, this being done, they were ready for the river—or, rather, for the ices at a pastrycook's shop in the High Street—called the High—which were, to precede the river.
Then they all trooped down to the boats and had a perfect hour's rowing; and then they explored Oxford a little, and saw Tom Quad at Christ Church (or "The House," as it is called), and were shown the rooms in which the author of "Alice in Wonderland" lived for so many years; and so right up through the city to Magdalen Grove, where the deer live, and Magdalen Tower, on the top of which the May Day carols are sung.