“Did he?” asked Michael, well aware of the question’s folly, but incapable of not asking it. “Terrible! Terrible! But it was never a public scandal.” “Oh,” gulped Michael humbly, wishful he had never asked Lord Cleveden about his father. “I can’t remember whether my old rooms were on that staircase or this one. Saxby’s I think were on this, but mine surely were on that one. Let’s go up and ask the present owner to let us look in,” Lord Cleveden proposed, peering the while in amiable doubt at the two staircases. “Oh, no, I say, father, really, no, no,” protested his son. “No, no; he may have people with him. Really.” “Ah, to be sure,” Lord Cleveden agreed. “What a pity!” “And I think we ought to buzz round St. Mary’s before lunch,” Lonsdale announced. “Do they make meringues here nowadays?” inquired Lord Cleveden meditatively. “No, no,” Lonsdale assured him. “They’ve given up since the famous cook died. Look here, we absolutely must buzz round St. Mary’s. And our crême caramel is a much showier sweet than anything they’ve got at the House.” The tour of St. Mary’s was conducted with almost incredible rapidity, because Lonsdale knew so little about his own college that he omitted everything except the J.C.R., the hall, the chapel, the buttery and the kitchen. “Why didn’t you ask Duncan Mackintosh to lunch, Arthur dear?” Lady Cleveden inquired. “My dear mother,” said Arthur, “he’s quite impossible.” “But Sir Hugh Mackintosh is such a charming man,” said Lady Cleveden, “and always asks us to stay with him when we’re in Scotland.” “Yes, but we never are,” Lonsdale pointed out. “And I’m sorry to hurt your feelings, mother, about a relation of yours, but Mackintosh is really absolutely impossible. He’s the very worst type of Harrovian.” Michael felt bound to support his friend by pointing out that Mackintosh was so eccentric as to dislike entertainment of any kind, and urged a theory that even if he had been asked, he would certainly have declined rather offensively. “He’s not a very bonhomous lad,” said Lonsdale, and with that sentence banished Mackintosh for ever from human society. After lunch the host supposed in a whisper to Michael that they ought to take his people out in a punt. Michael nodded agreement, and weighed down by cushions the party walked through the college to where the pleasure craft of St. Mary’s bobbed at their moorings.