She was an exceedingly pretty girl of twenty, in her second season, and consequently almost sufficiently worldly-wise to be Pip's mother. Having made an absolutely bloodless conquest of Pip, she valued him accordingly, and Pip was now beginning to realise that there must be something wrong with an attachment which consisted of perpetual devotion on the one side and nothing but an occasional careless acknowledgment of services rendered on the other. Of late, however, the situation had improved. Madeline had come up to Cambridge for the May Week, and finding that Pip occupied a position of authority and even admiration among his fellows that she had never dreamed of, and of which she had gathered no hint from Pip's own references to his 'Varsity life, Miss Carr decided in her shrewd, business-like, and thoroughly cold-blooded little heart that, for the time being, considerable _kudos_ might accrue to her as the exclusive proprietress of the most popular man of his year. Consequently for a brief week Pip had basked in the unaccustomed sunshine of her smiles; and though there had been a perceptible lowering of temperature since their return to town, he was still about as cheerful as a man in love has any right to be. He turned to Miss Innes. "Are you going to the party?" he asked. "Look at me!" replied his guest. "No, not at my face,"--Pip was regarding her resolutely between the eyes,--"my clothes. Can't you see I'm dressed for a party?" "Ah!" remarked Pip meditatively, shifting his gaze lower down, "I see. You are coming with us, I suppose?" "Not us," interposed Pipette,--"you." "What! aren't you coming yourself?" "No. The Lindons are to be here for lunch, and I must stay and entertain the old lady while Father and Sir John sit in the study and talk shop." "Bad luck!" replied Pip. "Sir John Lindon and the dad are always searching about inside people and finding new diseases," he explained, turning to Elsie. "It is called Research. I remember once in the 'lab' at--" "So you must escort Miss Innes, Pip," said Pipette hastily. "Right! That will be first-rate," said Pip, with a heartiness which quite surprised himself. Presently they went down to lunch, and after Pip had arrayed himself in tennis costume, the two set off for the Blanes' garden-party. It was the last week in June. Term was over, and ten places had been filled up in the Cambridge Eleven against Oxford. Pip so far had not received his Blue. He had just completed his first year, for he had not gone direct from school to the University, partly because his attainments were not quite up to the standard of the Previous Examination, and partly because he had never quite shaken off the effects of his fall in the dormitory that eventful night two-and-a-half years ago. A trip round the world with a tutor had corrected these deficiencies, and Pip was now at the end of his period of "Fresherdom" at the University of Cambridge.