Craik looked at Miss Lamb. She rested her eyes on him for a second, then pressing Mrs. Cotton's hand, she stooped down with a graceful impulse and kissed the fat old thing. Craik overheard Mrs. Lyon, the wife of the president of All Saints, talking to the Warden of St. Simon's.
"Dear Miss Lamb!" she said in a deep and sentimental voice; "she is just as nice to women as she is to men."
"She is much nicer, surely," the ancient Warden replied with a cackling laugh; "she never kissed me!"
Miss Lamb had disappeared. And Mrs. Cotton was busy discussing with philanthropic friends the affairs of Oxford charities.
"These Oxford parties are so nice," she said to Craik, as she turned her benevolent spectacles away from him; "they save one writing such heaps of notes."
Again Craik walked about alone, smiling and conspicuous; and although he tried to think that he was enjoying himself, he really wished very much to be up in his tower again, up there in its pleasant green shade and solitude. That, after all, was his place, the only place he was fit for; and he had better stick to it, and stick to his books, and not cast again the gloom of his presence on the social enjoyment of other more fortunate people. For he could not talk agreeably, and laugh and be gay; and, even if he could, which of the ladies who swept so prettily past him on the grass would ever care to listen to him? Thus resignedly musing, he retreated into the near shade of a laburnum tree, and, ceasing to smile in his fixed and weary way, he watched through the flowering branches the shining colours and placid agitation of the garden party. All the men except himself were moving among the groups of ladies, weaving darker threads into the brilliant pattern. Young Cobbe he saw, the captain of the College boat club, walking with Miss Lamb, walking and talking pleasantly, and he sighed; for although he was Cobbe's tutor, and well versed in his stupidity, he could not help envying the easy manners of the undergraduate.
But the half-real picture ceased to be a mere picture to him, and the sequence of images grew almost too vivid, when he noticed that Miss Lamb and her companion were coming directly to his tree. Could he manage to slip away without being seen? She was coming probably to pick a spray of the yellow flower to put in her white dress, or carry away perhaps as a memory of the party. And if he were found standing there like a policeman, it would be so awkward.
Miss Lamb fortunately met Maple Fetters, and, stopping herself, seemed to be sending him on to the tree alone. When he reached it, he pushed aside the branches and said, with a smile, "I say, Craik, I want to introduce you to Miss Lamb."
"Me?"
"Yes, you. We saw you here; she wants to meet you."