"Oh, Barbara Lynn! Yes, I'll introduce you to Barbara Lynn. But let me tell you, you'll take off your hat to her as you would to a duchess." "Look here, Fleming, don't make a fool of yourself." "I assure you I have no intention of doing so." "Well, you know what I mean. When you get up there among your mountains, and are locked in by ice and snow, you'll turn lonely. Nothing sucks the marrow out of a man's bones like loneliness. So take care. Don't marry a peasant lass." "Most of my friends at home claim to be the sons and daughters of statesmen." "Statesmen!" "Yes, statesmen. It's the finest aristocracy in the world that lives in the little grey houses among the Westmorland fells. Most families can trace their pedigree back for more grandfathers than the greatest folk in the land. And they have coats of arms too, have them carved on their bread cupboards and meal kists--though you'll not find them at the College of Heralds." The two men were quiet for a while; the dawn grew and the irregular buildings came out in blurred masses against the sky. There was not a spire or pinnacle, whose shape Peter could not clearly trace. They were drawn, as it were, upon his flesh, nay, engraved upon his bones so that the wasting tissues of age should not be able to fret their outlines. He had been marked indelibly by the finger-print of Oxford. To him had been given the gift of an historical imagination. He lived in hourly touch with the learning, the tragedies, the visions of the past. Hall and cloister, chapel and narrow stair, echoed with its voices. On a summer's day his favourite haunt was the high gallery round Saint Mary the Virgin's spire, where he could look over the city from its centre, and delight his eyes and his mind with vision and picture. Town and gown would seem to swirl below him in the narrow streets; processions of monks and prelates would pass and repass; Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer would come and go, and face the flames yonder by Balliol College. Archbishop Laud might pause opposite to his great porch, which he had crowned with a statue of the Virgin and Child; the deformed figure of Alexander Pope might wander by from the tower of Stanton Harcourt, his mind stirring with the martial lines of Homer. Or Peter might see Matilda, when the snow lay thick on the ground, escaping from the castle, clad in white, while the armies of Stephen besieged it. Then he would look at the shady gardens, the great trees, the silver sheen of Cherwell or Isis, and remember that these had all been living in those far-off days, and were still living, and would continue to live, after he, and his generation had returned to dust. From the wider view he would turn to the winged monkeys, the griffins, the pelicans of the roof below him, and he would hear again the chip, chip, of chisel and hammer in the thirteenth century, when the very stones he could lay his hands upon were first placed there.