"I remember Oxford as a place where I had some excellent pipes and never took my breakfast till I wanted it. It was a place where I worked devilish hard when I hadn't anything better to do. And I worked sensibly. No gentleman works after lunch or dinner. He walks or buys books after lunch and after dinner he talks. You must talk at Oxford, Martin."
"At debates, do you mean?"
"Not at the Union. Oh, Lord, not there. Robert has done that, and look at him. He's a broken man. He used to spend his vacs wondering how he could get the votes of Malthusian Mongols in Worcester without losing the support of Church and State in Keble. Didn't you, Robert?"
"I shall draw a veil over the past," said Robert. "I became President, anyhow."
"Be warned, Martin," his uncle went on. "Speak at college debates, if it amuses you. But shun a public career. Talk all night to your friends, for afterwards you won't get talk like it. You'll get shop talk and small talk and dirty talk, but at Oxford you'll get the real thing with luck."
Martin, remembering the tastes of Theo. K. Snutch, felt doubtful.
"Of course you'll find lots of nonsense there," John Berrisford added. "Lectures, for instance. They're nothing but an excuse to keep the dons from lounging: it certainly does give them an occupation for the mornings. Just think of it! There they are, mouthing away term after term. Either wisely cut——"
"Hear, hear!" from Robert.
"—or laboriously taken down, by conscientious youths with fountain pens and patent note-books. I suppose the Rhodes scholars use shorthand."
"Possibly," said Robert. "Certainly they have nasty little black books to slip in their pockets like reporters."