The laughter was partial, for certainly Goodfellow, and possibly another, besides Mrs. Miller, failed to catch the point, and the Archdeacon seemed in doubt whether the story were quite proper: but Mrs. Miller turned calmly to me, and begged that I would perform the necessary surgical operation, if I was quite sure----eh? “Quite safe,” I assured her: “I examine in Botany: plants which have visible flowers and so on are phanerogams: the others, _which marry in secret_, are cryptogamous: ferns are cryptogams.” “No joke can survive a post mortem”: Mrs. Miller smiled sadly and left us. “Have a cigar before you go?” said our host, and we made for the study. CHAPTER XII MILLER’S STUDY “Pereant qui ante nos nostra narraverint.” But not all. I stopped in the hall to search my great-coat pocket for my pipe, and I overheard the farewell of the Archdeacon. Domestic circumstances called him home, and the Canon remained to see him off the premises. It fell to me, therefore, to break to the others the news that the venerable one would not join them. They bore up. “He can’t take my new hat,” said the Rev. Patrick O’Brien, LL.D., “it hasn’t the curly brim: but he gets first pick of the umbrellas. I suppose he was created for some wise purpose, but he doesn’t eat, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t talk, and he doesn’t smoke. Hwat can ye do with um?” And he lit a fat cigar. “Reminds me of what Topers of Brasenose said to the Professor,” commented an elderly rector named Oldbury: (Oxford; high and dry; broadcloth, silk hat, bit of a squarson; good old chap). “Do you remember Topers?” he asked me. I pleaded comparative youth. “Ah, of course. Well, Topers and another man were dining at Balliol High Table with one of the dons, and the only other don present was Professor Aldrich, who hated Topers and all his ways, and was infinitely disgusted to meet him as a guest. Topers was quick to see this, and excelled himself in wit and anecdote, while the Professor was mute. The dinner was prolonged: the undergraduates departed: even the scholar whose duty it was to say Grace was released, when Topers turned to his host, and pleaded for a bottle of that admirable Balliol port to mellow the Stilton. This was too much for Aldrich: he got up and said, ‘Gentlemen, you will find coffee in the Common-room, when you are ready for it,’ and he was stalking down the empty hall. “Topers rose from his seat with tragic solemnity: ‘Go, sir,’ he said, with a majestic wave of his hand, ‘and take with you that appreciation of the good things of this world which Heaven has _not_ given you, and the conversation of which we have heard not a word.’”