‘Ay, the little variety when he chooses, which no doubt will be pretty frequently, makes all the difference in the world,’ said Fan, drily. ‘But I thought, Oliver, men could not work after dinner?’ ‘Can’t they?’ questioned Oliver, with equal dryness. ‘What! not after an hour’s rest such as a labouring man takes? Why, they do it every day they live when they eat a sufficient meal and call it luncheon. If they eat less it is at the peril of their health, with the temptation to gorge in the evening.’ ‘But head work, Oliver, head work,’ remonstrated Fan. ‘Is much like other work,’ maintained Oliver, stoutly. ‘It is not head work which stands in the way. Are you such an innocent as to suppose that head work is the engrossing occupation of the mass of the men at Oxford, or, for that matter, the mass of late diners? You may as well say prayers and have done with it. Bless you, Fan, I wish you saw some of the drags coming into the town, or watched the men in their boats at every hour of the twelve save the dinner-hour. True, many of the undergraduates do their reading on the water, only the subjects of study are apt to consist of the “Field” or “Bell’s Life,” or the fastest, trashiest novel.’ ‘But you read, Oliver,’ protested Fan, almost indignantly, for she had not so many cherished visions that she could afford to have one demolished in this cool manner. ‘Oh yes, I read,’ he asserted, as the simplest matter of course. ‘There are always some fellows who sap, some men whose business and pleasure are made up of reading under any circumstances. And I may give it as my experience that a proportion of the reading men are of my mind and Greatorex’s. How I did envy Greatorex going home to eat his wholesome little early dinner—call it a dinner of herbs, if you like—in peace, tête-à-tête with his wife, in his own little dining-room; returning to Mrs. Greatorex’s cheerful, pretty tea-table, walking with her, having his book, and his lounge, and smoke, his song and his chat afterwards; supping with his family, perhaps bidding a solitary beggar like me, who did not go in much for riotous “wines,” share his supper, like a Christian and a gentleman.’ ‘But “the feast of reason and the flow of soul,” the very spirit of the feast, there would not be room for that, Oliver?’ It was characteristic of Fan that she never contracted her brother’s name.