One of the girls was conspicuously attractive. She wore a neat costume of blue serge and a hat that showed up the gold of her pretty head. Her eyes were blue and innocent, her little nose had a mischievous tilt to it, and her mouth was like Cupid's bow. These last named attractions were not visible to Lucius Binney, who sat at the corner of a desk a few rows behind her; but he had a good view of the soft curves of a delicate tinted cheek, and a little shell-like ear perched coquettishly underneath the wavy brown hair, and, to do him justice, these beauties were not unappreciated by him, for he paid a good deal more attention to them than to the dulcet tones of the learned lecturer. It was now about the middle of the Michaelmas term, and Lucius had already sat in the same corner and looked at the same girl three times a week since the beginning of term, eleven times in all, and each time he looked his sense of the beautiful was more satisfied than before. Besides minor varieties the girl sometimes wore another costume of grey-green cloth and a felt hat to match, with a woodcock's tip in it. Lucius was like the lover in Tennyson's poem who speaks of his lady's dresses:-- "Now I know her but in two, Nor can pronounce upon it, If one should ask me whether The habit, hat and feather, Or the frock and gipsy bonnet Be the neater and completer; For nothing could be sweeter Than maiden Maud in either." He sometimes spoke of her to Dizzy, who attended the same lecture, and whose admiration of the girl was æsthetically great, but had not succeeded in penetrating his feelings. These two would hang about the court, chatting unconcernedly together, while she went out through the Great Gate with her companions. After the first week, when Lucius's appreciation of her charms had begun to bite a little, she sometimes gave him the merest glance out of the corners of her blue eyes as she passed him. There seemed to be a trace of amusement lurking in the glance, and Lucius understood that his admiration, although by no means obtrusive, had been observed--and dared he hope in some measure accepted?--by its object. "Oh, Dizzy, old man, she really _is_--that girl!" sighed Lucius, after silently watching the blue serge coat and skirt and the fair hair under the little hat disappear round the corner. "She really _is_--" What she really was did not transpire, but Dizzy quite understood and agreed. "She's a topper," said Dizzy. "I can't say fairer than that. She's a topper." "Have you noticed those little fluffy curls on her neck?" inquired Lucius. "With most girls they stick out straight and look as if they ought to be tucked in somewhere. But hers don't." "Why don't you take a snap-shot at them with a Kodak in the lecture-room?" suggested Dizzy.