"Be content," he said to his companion; "we are Gothic enough in Oxford nowadays. And the lad is right too. There was hope even for eighteenth-century Magdalen while its buildings looked on sunlight and on that tower. We lay too much stress on prayer. The lesson of that tower (with all deference to your amazing discernment and equally amazing whims) is not prayer, but praise. And between ourselves, when all men unite to worship God, it'll be praise, not prayer, that brings them together. Praise is devotion fit for noble minds, The differing world's agreeing sacrifice...." "Oh, if you're going to fling quotations from a tapster's son at my head.... Let me see ... how does it go on?... Where—something or other—different faiths— Where Heaven divided faiths united finds...." And in a moment the pair were in hot pursuit after the quotation, tripping each other up, like two schoolboys at a game. Taffy never forgot the last stanza, the last line of which they recovered exactly in the middle of the street, Velvet-cap standing between two tram-lines, right in the path of an advancing car, while he declaimed— "By penitence when we ourselves forsake, 'Tis but in wise design on piteous Heaven; In praise— (The gesture was magnificent) In praise we nobly give what God may take, And are without a beggar's blush forgiven. —Damn these trams!" The old clergyman shook hands with Taffy in some haste. "And when you reach home give my respects to your father. Stay, you don't know my name. Here is my card, or you'll forget it." "Mine too," said Velvet-cap. Taffy stood staring after them as they walked off down the lane which skirts the Botanical Gardens. The names on the two cards were famous ones, as even he knew. He walked back toward Trinity a proud and happy boy. Half-way up Queen's Lane, finding himself between blank walls, with nobody in sight, he even skipped. XX TAFFY GIVES A PROMISE The postman halted by the foot-bridge and blew his horn. The sound sent the rabbits scampering into their burrows; and just as they began to pop out again, Taffy came charging across the slope; whereupon they drew back their noses in disgust, and to avoid the sand scattered by his heels. The postman held up a blue envelope and waved it. "Here, 'tis come, at last!" "It may not be good news," said Taffy, clutching it, and then turning it over in his hand. "Well, that's true. And till you open it, it won't be any news at all." "I wanted mother to be the first to know." "Oh, very well—only as you say, it mightn't be good news." "If it's bad news, I want to be alone. But why should they trouble to write?" "True again. I s'pose now you're sure it _is_ from them?" "I can tell by the seal." "Take it home, then," said the postman. "Only if you think 'tis for the sake of a twiddling sixteen shilling a week that I traipse all these miles every day——" Taffy fingered the seal. "If you would really like to know——"