"Lodgings for the October Term"
Square cards inscribed with that device had offered me welcome for three years, and in the last term of my third year Loring and I settled seriously to the task of finding a new home against the day when we should be flung, time-expired, from our loved quarters in Tom. 'Seriously' in spirit if not in method, for we chartered a coach-and-four, invited a dozen men to breakfast and set out from Canterbury Gate with luncheon-baskets sufficient to feed a company. Proceeding impressively up King Edward Street we doubled back into St. Ebbs in search of what Loring called "working-class tenements for virtuous Radicals." Failing to find anything that suited us, we returned by Brewer Street and inspected Micklem Hall, but there was a garden attached, and we should have been constrained to walk a beagle-puppy. Leaving the last question open, I dispossessed Loring of the box-seat and drove for the next half-hour, because he had laid me five to three that there was no such college as Wadham, and seven to two that if there were I could not find it.
I remember we lunched a mile or two north of Woodstock because Crabtree of Magdalen, who had as usual invited himself and assumed direction of our movements, insisted that our last year must be undisturbed. In the late evening we returned triumphantly to Oxford and collided with a tram at the bottom of the Turl. A languid voice from the first-floor window of 93D High Street inquired if we needed anything.
"Lodgings for the October and two succeeding terms," Loring called back.
"These aren't bad digs," answered the voice, and Crabtree was left to sort out the Corporation tram while Loring and I inspected the house opposite.
"They've got the makings of very decent quarters," he admitted handsomely. "Decoration vile," he added in an aside, "but then, what d'you expect of a B.N.C. man?" A furtive creature with obliquity of vision ushered us in. "We must get rid of him, George. Find out whether he is the landlord or a B.N.C. don or merely our young friend's male parent."
I ascertained that the man of repellent aspect was the landlord.
"I suppose we must take your ghastly digs," said Loring between a yawn and a sigh.
The following October we moved in and gave a housewarming—with the town band engaged to play waltzes outside while we dined. It was a bachelor dinner, but Grayes of Trinity and Henderson and Billings of the House chartered rooms at the "Dumb Bell," and came over in Empire gowns, chestnut wigs, cloaks and cigarettes. We danced until the band went home to bed and then led our guests round to inspect and praise our decorations and observe the absence of Pringle, the landlord, who had been exiled to a cottage on Boar's Hill.
"Best bedroom, second-best bedroom," Loring explained. "Spare bedrooms also ran. Bathroom. All that messuage. Lounge. Kitchen. Usual offices. Hot and cold. Electric lights and bells. Gent's eligible town residence."