"I daresay I can manage that for you. I'm on the committee now, and we are always very kind; but, look here, father, there's not the slightest chance of your belonging to the 'Pitt' or the A.D.C. either if you don't keep yourself in the background at first. And whatever made you knock the stuffing out of your cap like that? It's only the rowdies whom nobody respectable has anything to do with who go in for that sort of thing." "Minshull told me that if you wore a new cap and gown everybody took you for a smug," said Mr. Binney. "Minshull's a fool," said Lucius, with withering scorn. "You'd better take my advice about things like that, not his. And I should buy myself a new cap if I were you." A few days after, Dizzy gave a dinner. Most of his guests had arrived and were discussing the vagaries of Mr. Binney, who by this time had become a public character, when Blathgowrie arrived in a state of some perturbation. "I say, you fellows," he said, as he came in. "This business will have to be stopped. I've had that little bantam in my rooms since seven o'clock. I'm not going to stand it." "What did he want?" "Said he hadn't seen me in hall, and wondered what had become of me--thought he'd pay me a friendly call." "What did you do?" "Well, I was civil for the sake of poor old Lucy. But I didn't get him out of the room for an hour, and he said he was coming again. Hang me if I ever saw such a pushing little scug." "Lucy ought to tell him to keep to himself." "Bless you, _he_ can't help it," said Dizzy. "He gets his screw docked every time he suggests such a thing." "Well, I call it a beastly shame. But if Lucius can't do it, somebody else must." "I'll do it," said Blathgowrie. "I'm not shy. He's bound to turn up again soon; said we were fellow freshmen, or some such rot, and ought to know one another better. He'll know _me_ better before I've done with him. Hush, here's Lucy." Mr. Binney was not elected to the "Pitt" Club, and Lucius had not been able to bring himself to propose his name for membership of the A.D.C., preferring to lose the £10 of income which his father knocked off for each rebuff, than to put his colleagues to the awkward necessity of either rejecting his nomination, or of electing his father to clubs where he was not wanted. Nor did his dinner bring about that measure of popularity which Mr. Binney had hoped for. Lucius asked four of his tried friends, who were very polite, very much bored, and retired early. Dizzy might have saved the situation, but Dizzy had gone up to town with an _exeat_. Mr. Binney had by this time joined the Union and spoken twice. He could talk of nothing else and looked forward with confidence to filling the President's chair. A few nights afterwards he again invaded Blathgowrie. It was about half-past nine, and that estimable nobleman had a select party of about twelve playing the unallowable game.