When I left my rooms to walk with the Warden, I imagined that every one I met was laughing at me, and being intensely on the alert for insults, I was very displeased with the butler when he came to the door, and surveyed me. "What can you want with the Warden?" was written plainly over his face. I have never met a man who could be more gravely condescending than the Warden's butler, and I know several first-class cricketers, two headmasters, a popular novelist, and a rising politician aged twenty-four. I should have enjoyed telling that man what I thought of him, but a doorstep is a poor place for an altercation, unless it is with a cabman, and I saw the Warden advancing upon me clad in a cloak, and carrying a most useful umbrella, which must have been rolled up by himself. The appearance of the Warden might have surprised any one, but it could have impressed nobody. You had to know that he was a Warden, and wrote books about religion and philosophy, before you could feel afraid of him. If he was a precisian in the choice of words, he certainly was not one in the matter of dress. "I think," he said, with just a glance at me to see if I was the right man, "that we will enter the Parks by the gates opposite to Keble College; we shall be more or less interrupted by the noisy, if necessary, shouts of football players, but we shall escape the authoritative note of the bicycle bell." There wasn't much that I could say in answer to this, so I walked down the Broad in silence, and tried in vain to keep step with my companion. Before we had reached Wadham his shuffle had got upon my nerves, and I wished furiously that he would say something to me. He seemed to have tucked his head into his neck, and to have retired into the world of contemplation. As we entered the Parks I was seized with a wild desire to run away. I had not uttered a word, and I had arrived at a state of mind which prompted me to give a terrific yell, just to see what would happen next. When I feel like that I must speak at least, so I said that it looked as if it might rain. It is not likely that I should have made such a remark if I could have thought of any other, and it had the merit of not being startling and also of being true. But if I had given the yell which I wished to give, I could not have produced a greater effect upon the Warden. I think that he had forgotten my existence, and for a moment he could not remember why I was with him. He poked his head forward, and looked at me until I regretted my effort at conversation, and was dreadfully afraid I should have to repeat it; a remark about the weather in some way or other seems to lose all its sparkle when it is repeated. The Warden, however, had heard what I said, and when he had detached himself from whatever he was thinking about, he answered me.