"You were quite the last person I expected to find here," I said, after telling her of my meeting with Dick.
"I was quite the last person a lot of people expected to find here," she answered.
"Dick has a lot to be thankful for. So—for that matter—have others."
"Dear old Dick! he has a lot to put up with, if that's what you mean. If he hadn't been a steward, they wouldn't have admitted me. Oh, the staring and the glaring and the pointing and the whispering!"
I now appreciated the reason of the bright eyes and pink cheeks.
"If you will espouse unpopular political causes," I began.
"I'm not complaining! This was nothing to what I've been through in the past. It's all in the day's work. What are you doing in Oxford?"
I helped myself to one of Dick's cigarettes. He kept them just where I used to keep mine. On second thoughts I put it back and ran my hand along the under-side of the mantelpiece to the hidden shelf where I used to keep cigars maturing. Dick had followed my admirable precedent. I commandeered a promising Intimidad, feeling all the while like the ghost of my twenty-year-old self revisiting the haunts of my affection.
"At the moment I met you, I was feeling very old and miserable," I said, when I had told her of the party committed to my charge. "Time was when I counted for something in this place, porters touched their hats to me, I could be certain of an apple in the back of the neck as I walked through the Quad. Now the hall is filled with young kings who know not Joseph. There are not twelve men or maidens who recognise me."
"Perhaps they don't know you."