Feargus was not at the hotel. He had left a note stating that he had gone for a walk and would be back in time for dinner. Nancy felt irritated. He was a moody soul, that Irishman: one day in high spirits and the next in the depths. She pinned on the hat and looked at herself in the glass.
Now really, how pretty she was! What a beguiling face, to be sure! Her cheeks seemed pinker under the shadow of the drooping rose-lined brim, and her laughing blue eyes added luster to the soft oval of her face.
“I think I am looking rather well,” she said to herself, patting a curl or two and giving her gray brilliantine frock a little jerk, as she hurried out again.
Her mind filled with her own charms and the joy of living in a world so happy and beautiful, she left the ancient hostelry and turned her face toward Magdalen College and her friends’ lodgings. Crossing the bridge, she let her glance wander along the green stretches of meadow beyond, with lovely glimpses of river scenery and wooded landscape.
And now, once over the bridge, she must cross the street, go a little way up another, and there, to be sure, was the gray house with the white steps. She marched up triumphantly.
“Who says I’m a dunce?” she demanded of her innermost self.
She rang the bell and the sound echoed through the house, but no one came to the door. Again she pulled the handle and the brazen call might have been heard through all Oxford, resounding far and near with a hundred reverberations. Then there floated to her from above a chorus of men’s voices. This was the song they sang:
“The story of Frederick Gowler,
A mariner of the sea,
Who quitted his ship, ‘The Howler,’
A-sailing in Caribbee.
For many a day he wandered
Till he met, in a state of rum,
Calamity Pop Von Peppermint Drop,
The King of Canoodle-Dum.”
All this time Nancy was ringing the bell impatiently. Finally a voice called down the stair-way:
“Why don’t you come up?”