‘The hour for dining in hall is not considered late feeding-time now-a-days,’ said Oliver, carelessly; ‘but it is a great deal too late for me,’ he added, with more interest. ‘I am not like you, Fan; I detest dining late. I stick to one o’clock as the hour which appetite, common sense, the testimony of our ancestors, and the practice of our continental neighbours have all agreed to honour. I know what you are going to say, that noon is the correct time. Well, I don’t object to anticipate matters; dining at noon is nearly the only mediæval custom, about the restitution of which, with advantage, I am quite clear.’ ‘I was not going to propose dining at noon,’ denied Fan, emphatically; ‘it would be an exceedingly inconvenient arrangement, unless households rose at daybreak again.’ ‘And why not?’ inquired Oliver, innocently. ‘Why not, indeed?’ retorted Fan, with lively impatience. ‘It is sufficient they don’t, and few people would like to form solitary exceptions. You may try it yourself if you like; not that I mean to say you’re a bad riser as it is.’ ‘I don’t often see the sun rise in summer,’ acknowledged Oliver, penitently, as he carved Sally’s _pièce de resistance_. He carved badly—worse than his father had carved, causing Fan, who was an expert in such feats, to fidget and marvel afresh. But Oliver himself was not in the least put out by his deficiency in table accomplishments. ‘If sunrise is so well worth seeing in Switzerland,’ continued Oliver, ‘it cannot be wholly unworthy of our notice here, as our actions seem to imply.’ ‘But if you get up in time for the sunrise, you must be content to go to bed with the sun,’ said Fan; ‘when all your neighbours are widest awake and fullest of life.’ ‘There’s the rub,’ admitted Oliver, shaking his finely-proportioned head, with its towselled thatch; ‘but there ought to be some compensation.’ ‘I don’t think you men, wise as you are, take consequences into consideration sufficiently,’ dogmatised Fan. ‘My dear child, don’t treat us to ironical flattery, though I grant ours is a belated kind of wisdom, so that we have to go to you women to make it practical for us. There was Greatorex, one of our tutors, who kept me in company in groaning over dinner in hall not being supper and the winding up of the day at once, supposing we were condemned to eat a meal in common. You will say the remedy was in Greatorex’s hands as well as in mine, but he never found it till he married a nice young soul who condescended to work out his theory for him. He has his dinner now at the time he ought to have eaten his lunch, but generally forgot or made a muddle of it. He is saved from becoming an ignoble martyr to mingled starvation and dyspepsia quite as much as to work. He has his evening stroll or his book, and his wife’s music by his own fireside in winter, when other men are at table, where he can join them for a little variety when he chooses.’