"I'll think about it; but you know I prefer solitude generally; misanthropical, I admit, but decidedly lucky for me, as my companions through life will always be my ink-stand, my terrier, and my papers. I have never wished for any other yet, and I hope I never shall. Are you going to smoke and drink audit on that sofa all day?" "No," answered Sydie, "I'm going to take a turn at beer and Brown's for a change. Well, I shall take you down with me on Tuesday, sir, so that's settled." Keane laughed, and after some few words on the business that had brought him thither, went across the quad to his own rooms to plunge into the intricacies of Fourrier and Laplace, or give the vigor of his brain to stuffing some young goose's empty head, or cramming some idle young dog with ballast enough to carry him through the shoals and quicksands of his Greats. Gerald Keane was a mathematical Coach, and had taken high honors--a rare thing for a Kingsman to do, for are they not, by their own confession, the laziest disciples of the dolce in the whole of Granta, invariably bumped and caught out, and from sheer idleness letting other men beat Lord's and shame the Oxford Eleven, and graduate with Double Firsts, while they lie perdus in the shades of Holy Henry? Keane, however, was the one exception to the rule. He was dreadfully wild, as ladies say, for his first term or two, though equally eloquent at the Union; then his family exulting in the accuracies of their prophecies regarding his worthlessness, and somebody else daring him to go in for honors, his pluck was put up, and he set himself to work to show them all what he could do if he chose. Once roused to put out his powers, he liked using them; the bother of the training over, it is no trouble to keep place as stroke-oar; and now men pointed him out in the Senate House, and at the Senior Fellows' table, and he bid fair to rank with the writer on Jasher and the author of the Inductive Sciences. People called him very cold. It was popularly averred that he had no more feeling than Roubilliac's or Thorwaldsen's statues; but as he was a great favorite with the under-grads, and always good-natured to them, there were a few men who doubted the theory, though _he_ never tried to refute or dispute it. Of all the young fellows, the one Keane liked the best, and to whom he was kindest, was Sydenham Morton--Sydie to everybody in Granta, from the little fleuriste opposite in King's Parade, to the V. P.'s wife, who petted him because his uncle was a millionnaire--the dearest fellow in the world, according to all the Cambridge young ladies--the darling of all the milliner and confectioner girls in Trumpington Street and Petty Cury--the best chap going among the kindred spirits, who got gated, and lectured, and rusticated for skying over to Newmarket, or pommelling bargees, or taking a lark over at Cherryhinton--the best-dressed, fastest, and most charming of Cantabs, as he himself would gravely assure you.