'Are you engaged this afternoon?' he inquired with quite friendly interest. 'Because, if not, I should so much like the advantage of your advice and assistance. My governor's coming up next week for a few days to Oxford, and he wants some rooms--nice rooms to entertain in. He won't go to the Randolph--banal, very, don't you know--because he'll want to see friends a good deal. He's convivial, the governor; and he'd like a place where they'd be able to cook a decent dinner. Now, Edward Street would do, I should think. First-rate rooms in Edward Street. Can you come round and help me?' He said it with an amount of _empressement_ that was really flattering. Now, Dick had nothing particular to do that afternoon, though he had been bound for the river; but he always liked a stroll with that brilliant Gillingham, whom he had never ceased to admire as a creature from another social sphere--a cross between Lord Byron and the Admirable Crichton. So he put off his row, and walked round to Edward Street, the most fashionable quarter for high-class lodgings to be found in Oxford. Sir Bernard, it seemed, had just returned to England for a few short weeks from his Roumanian mission, and was anxious to get decent rooms, his son said--'the sort of rooms, don't you know, where one can dine one's women folk, for he knows all the dons' families.' They looked at half a dozen sets, all in the best houses, and Gillingham finally selected a suite at ten guineas. Dick opened his eyes with astonishment at that lordly figure: he never really knew till then one could pay so much for lodgings. But he concealed his surprise from the Born Poet, his own pride having early taught him that great lesson in life of _nil admirari,_ which is far more necessary to social salvation in snob-ridden England than ever it could have been in the Rome of the Cæsars. On their way back to college, after a stroll round the meadows, they met a very small telegraph boy at the doors of Durham. 'Message for you, sir,' the porter said, touching his hat to Dick; and in great doubt and trepidation, for to him a telegram was a most rare event, Dick took it and opened it. His face flushed crimson as he read the contents; but he saw in a second the only way out of it was to put the best face on things. 'Why, _my_ father's coming up, too!' he said, turning round to Gillingham. 'He'll arrive tomorrow. I--I must go this moment and hunt up some rooms for him. My sister doesn't say by what train he's coming; but he evidently means to stay, from what she tells me.' 'One good turn deserves another,' Gillingham drawled out carelessly. 'I don't mind going round with you and having another hunt. I should think that second set we saw round the corner would just about suit him.' The second set had been rated at seven guineas a week. Dick was weak enough to colour again.