"That's true enough," Murray said; "Learoyd was one of the nicest men up here until this term, and then Dennison took a fancy to him and the idiot has chucked up working and spends his time trying to be a blood. I know his people, and have tried all I know to persuade him that he will never make a successful blood--he isn't made for one--but I have done no good. Marten isn't in it with Learoyd for rows with Edwardes, and the worst of it is that if his exhibition was taken away it would be serious. His people are most frightfully hard up." "That makes the whole thing a thousand times more complicated," I replied, "I can't give a man away who is in a hole already. I had better sit still and see what happens." "I should think you had better go and see Learoyd," Foster said, "he can't be in a bigger hole than you are." He got up to go, and I said that I should wire to my people in the morning and tell them he had got his blue, but he told me that they knew already, and asked me if I had heard that Nina was coming up during the next week to see the last nights of the eights. "I had a letter from her last night," he continued, "and she said that Mrs. Marten was going to write to you." "Who is coming up with her?" I asked, and I felt that if I never wrote to Nina, there was no reason why she should not write to me. "She is going to stay at the Rudolf with the Faulkners. They are coming next Monday morning," and having told me this, which he knew I should not like, he was kind enough to go away before I told him again what I thought of Mrs. Faulkner. For when Fred had been staying with me at home the Faulkners were a fertile source of dispute between us. The Faulkners had plenty of money, nothing to do, and no children; they entertained a great deal, and had a mania for taking people up, as it is called. I am almost certain that Mrs Faulkner tried to take me up once, but unfortunately I was expected to run in double harness with a fellow who wore a yellow tie and was no use at anything except talking. I put up with him for nearly the whole of an afternoon, until he told me that an ordinary dahlia, over which he was gushing, reminded him of the sun rising over the Hellespont, and that was altogether too much for me. I left him and offended Mrs. Faulkner by telling her what I thought of him, and she told my mother that it was such a pity that I was so _gauche_. It took me a long time to forgive her for saying that, and I wished Nina was coming to Oxford with some one who did not bother my mother with her opinions. I sat and pondered over this visit for some time, while Murray kept on telling me that Learoyd would be in bed if I did not hurry over to see him. But what good I could get out of seeing him I could not understand, and Murray became quite abusive before I started.