"And now I must go to bed," said Mr. Binney, "so as to begin work early to-morrow morning. I don't want to lose a minute more than I can help. I'm not getting on terms with Mr. Plato as quickly as I should like. I shall be able to introduce you to Minshull before you start, Lucius. He's a good chap, and not a bit stand-offish as you might expect, considering he's a B.A., and I'm not even a freshman yet. You'll find him quite easy to get on with." Minshull was one of those people in whose eyes a three years' residence at Oxford or Cambridge is such a glorious thing, that if they have gone through it themselves they can talk or think of nothing else throughout their lives. The healthy pleasant life of the average undergraduate is idealised into a sort of seventh heaven, and a "blue" takes his place immediately below the archangels and considerably above any mere mortal. Seniority of residence forms an almost complete bar to social intercourse with undergraduates of lower standing, and the little code of etiquette invented to enliven proceedings in the lesser colleges is as the laws of the Medes and Persians. To be or to have been "a 'Varsity man" was the only thing quite necessary in Minshull's eyes, if you were to call yourself a gentleman, and he therefore saw nothing that was not entirely laudable in Mr. Binney's determination to acquire this hall-mark of superiority, however late in life. While trying to instil into his pupil the requisite amount of Latin and Greek, he imparted to him at the same time his own particular point of view in matters of undergraduate custom, taught him what to admire and what to avoid, until Mr. Binney was infused with the spirit of a provincial youth about to enter the gates of the University paradise from his country grammar school. Mr. Binney had first of all considered a belated career at Cambridge as an opportunity for mending a defective education; under the encouragement of Mrs. Higginbotham's yearnings after vanished delights he had come to look upon it as a means of gaining some of the prestige of golden youth; influenced by Minshull's complacent reverence, he had insensibly drifted away from the careless acquiescence with which Lucius, for instance, regarded his own proposed residence at the University, and now felt that he should break his heart if he was prevented from taking his part in the glamorous delights which his tutor held before his eyes. He made herculean efforts to get on terms with his examination subjects, and worked harder than he had ever done in his life before. Minshull arrived at nine o'clock the next morning as usual. Mr. Binney, who had been working since seven and had breakfasted at eight, had not yet returned from a short constitutional, and Lucius had the privilege of an interview with his father's tutor.