I was never able to find out how the dons heard of my scheme, but they find out most things by some extraordinary means, and The Bradder spoke to me very encouragingly about it, though he looked at me as if I amused him in some odd sort of way. He also asked me to breakfast, which I thought was carrying kindness a little too far. I anticipated the usual thing--a crowd of men with large appetites, and a host who abstained from food in his efforts to provide conversation; but when I went to The Bradder's rooms I found that I was in for a _tete-a-tete_, and my opinion of the other kind of breakfast rose considerably. As a don I was not in the least nervous of him, but as a host I thought he might be overwhelming. That he ever lived through this meal without laughing was a marvel, for when I was sitting opposite to him my nervousness vanished, and I told him exactly what I thought about every subject he suggested, and it was not until I had left him that it occurred to me that I had been talking nearly all the time, and that he had said very little. I determined that he was a most thoroughly good sort, but the idea of his being a don struck me as being absurd. I put him on my side with the Warden and the Bursar, and thought that Mr. Edwardes was in a hopeless minority of one in persecuting me, for I looked upon the Subby as a man who had been born to be neutral. I do not suppose that I should ever have started my first crusade if I had known that it was going to cause the mildest of sensations. As far as I had thought about it at all, I had imagined that everybody in St. Cuthbert's would be glad to see the college take its usual place again, and certainly I had no idea that I should be violently supported and opposed. The captains of everything were in favour of less slackness, but Dennison and all his set said that an Oxford college was not a public school, and talked a lot of nonsense about the iniquity of compulsory games. No further proof is needed to show how unfair they were, for a man must be mad to dream of compulsory games at Oxford, and such an idea never entered my head. But all this talking made me wish that I had never said or done anything, and before long I was heartily tired of the whole thing, for my own affairs became rather more than I could manage.