We found Nina and Fred waiting for us, and Nina said she had been having a splendid time on the Oriel barge. But I could think of nothing except that we were not the college we used to be, and I left Fred to talk to both Mrs. Faulkner and Nina. CHAPTER XIV GUIDE, HOST AND NURSE When I got back to my rooms after leaving Mrs. Faulkner and Nina I found a note from Owen asking me to go and see him at once. Since he had, until then, avoided me in every possible way I guessed that something serious had happened, and when I got to his rooms in Lomax Street, I found him in bed with a cough which ought to have frightened his landlady instead of making her in a very bad temper. He was, however, more worried about the interruption to his reading than anxious about himself, and he said flatly that he could not afford to have a doctor. I tried to cheer him up--but you can't cheer up a man with a cough--and I told him I would come to him whenever he wanted me, and made him promise he would send for me if I could do anything for him. He did not seem to have a single friend in Oxford, and the loneliness of the man made me feel absolutely wretched. I went to a very confidential chemist who knew nearly every man who had ever been at Oxford, and everything under the sun, and explained to him what sort of cough Owen had. He understood instantly, and said that he would send a mixture which worked miracles, but I could not get Owen off my mind at once, and when Jack Ward came in very late to see me I sat up talking to him until a most unrighteous hour, with the result that I lay in bed the next morning until I was perfectly tired of my scout coming to call me. A letter from my mother was on my table in which she said that I was on no account to allow Nina to interrupt my reading, but I had only just finished breakfast, when Mrs. Faulkner and Nina came into my rooms. Mrs. Faulkner fixed her eyes on the tea-pot and said nothing; Nina, however, asked if everybody in Oxford breakfasted at eleven o'clock. I had not expected them, and was consequently a little flurried; the truth is that I was not properly dressed, which handicapped my movements considerably. Decency compelled me to keep my legs under the table, until I could slip into my bedder. I was not in a condition to treat visitors who goaded at my laziness with any courage; tact was the only thing possible. In my agitation I did not notice that Nina had put on the clock quite twenty minutes, and when she asked me if I was going to sit in front of the marmalade for the rest of the day, I had to reply that I thought it was rather a good place to sit. I had managed to hide myself behind the table-cloth when I stood up to wish them good-morning, but I simply did not dare to move again.