"Hullo! Are you ready?"
The door was kicked open, and Eric Lane sauntered in and inspected his own clothes by the revealing light of the afternoon sun. He also was frowning, for the sense of departure was heavy upon him too, and the papers that day had not been to his liking.
"Our final dissipation!" cried Jack, seizing him by the arm and clattering down the narrow staircase into the Turl. "I say, Eric, I don't half like the idea of not coming up next term; I was just beginning to find my way about this place. There you see Lincoln. Here we have Jaggers. I've never been inside Jaggers. Shall we make up a party and go to-morrow?"
A knot of Jesus men glared with the dumb fury which the small nations of the world feel towards the Great Powers. A sing-song Welsh voice commented devastatingly on the vanity of bottle-green dress-coats and their wearers.
"I can't go after that," murmured Jack with dignity. "Never imagined they understood English. Ought I to go back and apologize?" He stopped short in front of a haberdasher's shop and nodded gravely at the seductive window. Club colours and college colours contended and clashed with giant brown and yellow silk handkerchiefs adorned with white bulldogs. "We might buy them a peace-offering."
"I always wonder why you're not more disliked than you are," mused Eric.
"People only dislike me until I've given them time to see that I'm right and they're wrong," explained Jack complacently. "I was very unpopular at New College my first term. They wanted me to row—just because I'd rowed at Eton. You can't row and hunt. I never did any of the things they wanted; the people here are such sheep. Did I ever tell you that the rowing push came to rag my rooms just because I chose to dress for Hall? They said it was 'side.' Unfortunately, their spokesman was drunk, so I had to ask him to leave. It's such bad form to drink more than you can carry. Now any number of men dress for Hall. Sheep, just sheep. I think the reason you and I get on so well together is that you don't try to lead my life for me."
"Oh, I'm used to you," Eric interrupted. "Ever since I can remember, you've sat still and let every one else revolve round you. Your people, Agnes, me——"
Jack smiled at his reflection in the window. Though his self-satisfaction annoyed women and older men, no one could remain impatient with him for long. He was always too good-tempered to provide sport and too sure of himself to mind criticism. The man who is content to do nothing starts, too, with an advantage over the man who not only wants something done but would like it done in his own way. In childhood the threat that he would not be taken to a party unless he behaved himself well had only once been used against Jack; his mother found afterwards that he had genuinely enjoyed himself more at home; and ever since he had won his own way by studied inertia.
"You're so efficient!" he explained. "I should never have got through my schools but for you. And you pack so well. By the way, you've looked out the trains for to-morrow, haven't you? And arranged with Agnes for a cart to meet me? I hate writing letters.... Shall we dig together in London? If you'll find some decent rooms and a man to look after us—Agnes will help you choose the furniture—and if you'll make everything shipshape and comfortable, I'm hanged if I don't come and live with you! There!"