"Oh, you've got a certain vulgar strength," he admitted, "like most modern girls. But you've got the hands and feet of a professional beauty. Of course you may not have stopped growing yet."
"I'm five feet nine! I admit I've not much fat on me!"
Honour was satisfied, and I separated the combatants. For his height Loring was very well proportioned, but he hated an imputation of fatness almost as much as O'Rane hated being teased about his slightness of body or smallness of bone. He certainly made up into a very beautiful woman when the O.U.D.S. played "Henry V" and he took the part of Katherine. The intention had been to follow the practice of years and invite a professional actress from London; O'Rane's performance, however, was too good to be set aside. I have a photograph of the company with Raney seated in the middle. With his small, sensitive mouth and white teeth, his clean-cut nose and long-lashed, large black eyes, he makes a very attractive girl.
"This is a wonderful place," he said, as we sat down to dinner. "I've been sight-seeing to-day."
"Anything worth seeing?" asked Loring, whose substantially accurate boast it was that he had never been within the walls of a strange college.
We found that O'Rane had been prompt and thorough, ranging from the "Light of the World" in Keble Chapel to the scene of Amy Robsart's death, and from the gardens of Worcester to Addison's Walk. He talked of Grinling Gibbons' carving with a facility I envied when it was my fate to conduct my mother and sister round Oxford.
"Wonderful place," he repeated. "Choked up with the débris of mediaevalism. Atmosphere rather worse than a tropical swamp. Last refuge of dead enthusiasms and hotbed of sprouting affectations."
He jerked out the criticism and turned his attention to the soup.
"You're very disturbing, Raney," I said. "For four years you knocked Melton inside out; can't you leave Oxford alone? I'm rather fond of it."
"So am I—already. I'm fond of any place that picks a man up and sets him on his legs. I'm fond of England as you two can never be."