We strolled about Oxford until lunch-time, and I answered every question asked me, and most of my answers were accurate. For I had been careful enough to take an Oxford guide-book to bed with me, and had not entirely wasted the early morning. In fact Mrs. Faulkner's visit forced me to see that I knew very little about Oxford. My guide-book knowledge was so condensed that it was more satisfying than satisfactory, and if I had been asked what I charged per hour, I should have had no right to be angry. However, I did march Mrs. Faulkner and Nina round some of the sights of the place. I showed them the Bodleian, All Souls, Shelley's memorial, and finally brought them to a shady seat in Addison's Walk. I had been compelled to hurry for two reasons; in the first place we had not very much time, and secondly, my knowledge was not proof against the string of questions which only want of breath could stop Mrs. Faulkner from asking. I should imagine that a large number of men never find out how great their ignorance of Oxford is until they have to show people round it, and I candidly confess that on this day I was ashamed of myself. I was more at home in Addison's Walk than in any other place to which I had taken them, for it was in the open air, and also there was something about Addison and Steele and Gay which made me like them. The coffee-houses at which they met must have had some mysterious attraction for me, I think, and led me on to read what they had written. I should have liked to have Sir Roger de Coverley for my uncle, and I cannot imagine a nicer man to have a day's fishing with than Will Wimble. I hated Pope as much as I liked Addison, and though Mrs. Faulkner said he was a great satirist, I thought of him only as a man who wrote most disagreeable things about his friends. "It is necessary to separate the man from his work, if you are to be a good critic," Mrs. Faulkner said, and though this remark may be true enough I did not answer it, for Nina was looking extremely bored by the conversation we had been having about Addison. "We may as well go to Oriel and find Fred," I suggested, and Nina got up at once. "Unfortunately the art of satire is dead, drowned by exaggeration," Mrs. Faulkner said as we went through the cloisters. "I think it's a better death than it deserves, don't you, Nina?" I replied. "I know nothing whatever about it," she answered. "Abuse has taken the place of satire," Mrs. Faulkner continued. "And a jolly good job, too," I said, for Nina's face of disgust made me forget to whom I was talking; "it is those sly digs in the ribs which make me ill." "My dear Godfrey, what dreadful slang you use. A few minutes ago you surprised me by being interested in English literature, and now you talk as if there had never been such a thing." "You surprised me, too," I said, for I felt as if I had concealed enough for one day. "How? Do tell me," Mrs. Faulkner said quickly.