"Dartmoor is good, isn't it? I want to go down and dig about in the hut circles. I am sure they haven't done enough. Passingham of Exeter found some awfully jolly bones, besides some arrows and things. Do you like digging?"
Martin confessed that he had never tried: he would have liked to add that he found the hut circles disappointing. But he didn't dare to say so. This conversation was rather trying and he was relieved when Petworth came to business and mapped out his lectures and hours for showing up compositions.
"I'm usually in after ten," concluded the tutor. "Come up and see me and bring any questions. And don't do less than an hour a day."
"That won't kill me," said Martin.
"It's possible not to reach that standard, I find. Oxford is full of things to do. Don't do all of them."
Martin went away with a muddled impression of countless book-shelves, two excellent arm-chairs, some nice prints, a little, bright-eyed urbane man and a general atmosphere of invincible jolliness. He was not at all sure that he liked it.
For the first week or two Martin was the unwilling but abject victim of Galerism. Galer had a way with youths and could handle even the most pronounced, aggressive, 'Damn you, I'm a man of the world' type of fresher. His influence, he knew, would never utterly die, but time would weaken it: and so in the first few days he did his best to train the new-comers on his stair in the best traditions of the college and university. Also he endeavoured to keep them from sowing political wild oats: there was nothing Galer loathed more bitterly than carrying up Radical or Socialist newspapers. Martin soon began to hate the man fervently. He wanted to find out how one could change one's rooms, for he would live in a pigsty to avoid Galer.
"Your cheese, sir," the wheezy voice would say. "I see as 'ow these deemagogues 'ave brought a lot of transport workers out. Wicked I call it. Wot the Gov'ment ought to do is to be firm. 'Ave out the troops and 'and out a bit of sleeping-draught. That's my notion of ruling. One of those there riff-raff killed a loyal worker."
"In other words, a scab," said Martin boldly.
"It's a 'orrid name to give a chap," said Galer. "I don't see no crime in bein' loyal. I 'ope you don't 'old with these paid agitators!"