“Am I really so late?” said Connie, in distress, running downstairs the following afternoon to find the family and various guests waiting for her in the hall. “Well, I hope we shan’t miss everybody,” said Alice sharply. “How late are we?” She turned to Herbert Pryce. The young don smiled and evaded the question. “Nearly half an hour!” said Alice. “Of course they’ll think we’re not coming.” “They” were another section of the party who were taking a couple of boats round from the lower river, and were to meet the walkers coming across the Parks, at the Cherwell. “Dreadfully sorry!” said Connie, who had opened her eyes, however, as though Alice’s tone astonished her. “But my watch has gone quite mad.” “It does it every afternoon!” murmured Alice to a girl friend of Nora’s who was going with the party. It was an aside, but plainly heard by Constance—whose cheeks flushed. She turned appealingly to Herbert Pryce. “Please carry my waterproof, while I button my gloves.” Pryce was enchanted. As the party left the house, he and Constance walked on together, ahead of the others. She put on her most charming manners, and the young man was more than flattered. What was it, he asked himself, complacently, that gave her such a delicate distinction? Her grey dress, and soft grey hat, were, he supposed, perfect of their kind. But Oxford in the summer term was full of pretty dresses. No, it must be her ease, her sureness of herself that banished any awkward self-consciousness both in herself and her companions, and allowed a man to do himself justice. He forgot her recent snubs and went off at score about his own affairs, his college, his prospects of winning a famous mathematical prize given by the Berlin Academy, his own experience of German Universities, and the shortcomings of Oxford. On these last he became scornfully voluble. He was inclined to think he should soon cut it, and go in for public life. These university towns were really very narrowing! “Certainly,” said Constance amiably. Was he thinking of Parliament? Well, no, not at once. But journalism was always open to a man with brains, and through journalism one got into the House, when the chance came along. The House of Commons was dangerously in want of new blood. “I am certain I could speak,” he said ardently. “I have made several attempts here, and I may say they have always come off.” Constance threw him a shy glance. She was thinking of a dictum of Uncle Ewen’s which he had delivered to her on a walk some days previously. “What is it makes the mathematicians such fools? They never seem to grow up. They tell us they’re splendid fellows, and of course we must believe them. But who’s to know?”