"Aren't you?" said Mrs. Higginbotham. "Well, never mind, I'm sure you will be some day if you do your lessons--I mean your work well, and satisfy the Professors. And now, Peter, there is one little thing that I wish to speak to you about. That time you got into trouble. I was very grieved to hear about that. My poor dear father always used to say----" "Oh, bother your father, Martha!" exclaimed Peter. "What did _he_ know about life at the 'Varsity? I told you in my letter that nobody at Cambridge thinks anything of a lark like that except the fusty old dons--and who cares for what _they_ think?" "It isn't polite of you to say, 'bother my father,' Peter," rejoined Mrs. Higginbotham with some warmth. "He was a very good father to me, and I never gave him a moment's trouble till the day of his death. I did think that after the lesson you had received--being locked into your bedroom every night at eight o'clock as I gathered from your letter--that you would have seen the folly of such behaviour. But I am sorry to see from this paper which you sent me the other day, that this is not the case." Mrs. Higginbotham took up from the table at her side one of those ephemeral journals which come and go at the Universities with almost as much frequency as the successive generations of undergraduates who produce them. This one was called _The New Court Chronicle_, and had been started by one of Mr. Binney's Rugby football acquaintances. In it was a weekly letter in imitation of those that appear in some of the London Society papers, and one paragraph ran as follows:-- "Millie has come up here for a week to see something of her younger brother, Arthur, who has entered at Trinity, and is quite a _persona grata_ with the 'smart' set at that most _chic_ of all the colleges. He took his brother-in-law to a dinner at Mr. 'Peter' Binney's rooms one night, and Sir George came away quite charmed with the _verve_ and _élan_ of his diminutive host. Sir George says that there was not so much wine drunk as in his days at Cambridge, but what there was, was of excellent quality and seemed to _go further_. Little Mr. Binney insisted on making a speech, and caused uproarious merriment by remarking that he _saw double_ the number of friends he had invited, but he was pleased to welcome them all, and as many more of the same sort as liked to come. Owing to the sultriness of the weather, Mr. Binney was unfortunately seized with a slight indisposition before the party broke up, but he was comfortably settled in bed by his guests before they left, and Millie met him in Jesus Lane the next morning looking as sprightly as ever, and had a short conversation with him, in which he humorously remarked that he had never turned his back upon don or devil yet." Mrs. Higginbotham opened the paper and pointed to this paragraph.