One warm summer afternoon two young men were leaning out of a window, smoking their pipes, and enjoying a lazy half-hour. The window was one of a long row in the garden-quadrangle of an old gray Oxford college; and you looked out of it on a beautiful close-shaven lawn, bordered with flower beds, and inclosed on one side by one of watery Oxford’s many streams. This lawn, in the summer, is never without its family of water-wagtails. Here there is no fear of bird-nesting boys, and comparatively little peril of cats; and the turf is mown so often and so closely, that even the youngest bird can find his food there without the least trouble. And there they were that July afternoon, sometimes running so quickly that you quite lost sight of their little black legs, then stopping suddenly and moving their tails rapidly up and down for a few moments, then pouncing upon some unlucky insect on the grass, or perhaps pursuing it in the air with a quick fluttering of wings and tails; and all the while uttering that contented little double-note of theirs, which seemed to say to the occupants of the old panelled rooms above them, “This is real happiness; we take what comes, and ask no questions; _we_ don’t puzzle our heads over Philosophy, and Biology, and Constitutional History, and Economical Science. Why, even _you_ wouldn’t be trying to find out a reason for everything, if you weren’t afraid the Examiners were going to ask you for it! Come down here and lie on this beautiful lawn in the shade, and forget all about the why and the wherefore. Take things as you find them; there are no Examiners about just now!” The two young men were not thinking of the wagtails; but neither were they thinking of anything else in particular, and the invitation to go and lie on the lawn found its way somehow into their temporarily vacant minds. They put on their flannels and their boating coats and went and stretched themselves at full length under the cool shade of an acacia. There they lay quite quiet and happy, and were for some time so silent that the wagtails ventured up quite close to them without any sign of fear. One was a poet; at least his friends thought him one, and as he himself was not quite sure that they were right, it is not impossible that he had a few poetic streaks in his nature. The other was a student of science, and spent most of his time in cutting earth-worms and frogs into beautiful little slices, and looking at them through a microscope. They had a liking for each other, because neither fully understood the other’s thoughts and ambitions; so there was plenty of room for comfortable silence, and cosy human companionship. At last the silence was broken by the poet. He spoke as much to himself as to his friend. “It’s very puzzling,” he said.