Mr. Binney was delighted with everything he saw. The gay crowd in the paddock at Ditton Corner, the lines of carriages on one side, and the flotilla of moored boats under the bank, appealed to him with all the force of a delightful novelty. The boating men and others on the tow-path across the river, with the photographers plying their trade and letting off their amiable witticisms through their megaphones, the boat crews in their coloured coats, some of them with flowers in their hats, swinging down to their stations round the bend, gave him great pleasure. Then, after a pause, filled with the gossip and laughter of the crowd, when a distant gun was heard, and three minutes afterwards a second, and a minute after yet another; when the men in the boats under the bank straightened themselves and said, "They're off"; when a moving mass of the heads of men running was seen far away under the willows across the meadows; when little men laden with bundles of coats fled along the tow-path opposite towards the "Pike and Eel"; when the noise of the shouting and the springing of rattles drew nearer; when every head in the crowd was turned towards Ditton Corner, and two boats came into sight very close to one another, and after them two more, and the shouting and cheering was taken up by every one around him, Mr. Binney lost his head with excitement, and yelled with the best of them, especially for the heroes of Fitzwilliam Hall whom he, for some reason or other, mistook for a Trinity crew. "It's grand, Minshull, it's grand," he said as they made their way home with the crowd along the river bank and across Midsummer Common. "I don't wonder at your being proud of Cambridge, Minshull." "I'm glad Pothouse made their bump just opposite Ditton," said Minshull complacently. "Now you see what rowing is like, Mr. Binney." "Lucius rowed well," said Mr. Binney. "Didn't you think so?" "Yes," said Minshull, who had been a diligent but ineffective La Crosse and hockey player during his residence at the University, and hardly knew an oar from a barge pole. "But it seemed to me that he hardly caught the beginning enough." "You had better tell him that," said Mr. Binney with unconscious irony. "I dare say he'll be glad of any hints he can get." Lucius sat in his rooms in Jesus Lane the next afternoon in a very depressed frame of mind. His father had intimated that he was coming to tea. Lucius had invited Dizzy to meet him, hoping that his friend's pleasant flow of conversation would help out the entertainment, and prevent his own plentiful lack of cheerfulness from becoming too apparent; but Dizzy had not arrived yet. He devoutly hoped that nobody else would unexpectedly honour him with his society. But alas! an Eton friend, one year his junior, who was in for the entrance examination, took that untoward opportunity of paying him a visit.