Bindle did as he was bid.
"We were talking about Gravy when you came in," remarked Tom Little.
"An' very nice too, with a cut from the joint an' two vegs.," remarked Bindle pleasantly.
Dick Little explained that "Gravy" was the nickname by which Mr. Reginald Graves was known to his fellow-undergraduates. "We're about fed up with him at Joe's," Tom Little added.
"An' 'oo might Joe be, sir, when 'e's at 'ome, an' properly labelled?" enquired Bindle.
"It's St. Joseph's College, Oxford, where my brother is," explained Dick Little.
In the course of the next half-hour Bindle learned a great deal about Mr. Reginald Graves, who had reached Oxford by means of scholarship, and considered that he had suffered loss of caste in consequence. His one object in life was to undo the mischief wrought by circumstances. He could not boast of a long line of ancestry; in fact, on one occasion when in a reminiscent mood he had remarked:
"I had a grandfather——"
"Had you?" was the scathing comment of another man. The story had been retailed with great gusto among the men of St. Joseph's.
Reginald Graves was a snob, which prompted him to believe that all men were snobs. Burke's Peerage and Kelly's Landed Gentry were at once his inspiration and his cross. He used them constantly himself, looking up the ancestry of every man he met. He was convinced that his lack of "family" was responsible for his unpopularity.