ONE day when the family at the Manor Green had assembled for luncheon, the rector was announced. He came in and joined them, saying,with his usual friendly ~bonhomie~, "A very well-timed visit, I think! Your bell rang out its summons as I came up the avenue. Mrs. Green, I've gone through the formality of looking over the accounts of your clothing-club, and, as usual, I find them correctness itself; and here is my subscription for the next year. Miss Green, I hope that you have not forgotten the lesson in logic that Tommy Jones gave you yesterday afternoon?" "Oh, what was that?" cried her two sisters; who took it in turns with her to go for a short time in every day to the village-school which their father and the rector had established: "Pray tell us, Mr. Larkyns! Mary has said nothing about it." "Then," replied the rector, "I am tongue-tied, until I have my fair friend's permission to reveal how the teacher was taught." Mary shook her sunny ringlets, and laughingly gave him the required permission. "You must know, then," said Mr. Larkyns, "that Miss Mary was giving one of those delightful object-lessons, wherein she blends so much instructive-" "I'll trouble you for the butter, Mr. Larkyns," interrupted Mary, rather maliciously. The rector was grey-headed, and a privileged friend. "My dear," he said, "I was just giving it you. However, the object-lesson was going on; the subject being ~Quadrupeds~, which Miss Mary very properly explained to be 'things with four legs.' Presently, she said to her class, 'Tell me the names of some quadrupeds?' when Tommy Jones, thrusting out his hand with the full conviction that he was making an important suggestion, exclaimed, 'Chairs and tables!' That was turning the tables upon Miss Mary with a vengeance!" During luncheon the conversation glided into a favourite theme with Mrs. Green and Miss Virginia, - Verdant's studies: when Mr. Larkyns, after some good-natured praise of his diligence, said, "By the way, Green, he's now quite old enough, and prepared enough for matriculation: and I suppose you are thinking of it." Mr. Green was thinking of no such thing. He had never been at college himself, and had never heard of his father having been there; and having the old-fashioned, what-was-good-enough-for-my-father-is-good-enough-for-me sort of feel- [AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 15] ing, it had never occurred to him that his son should be brought up otherwise than he himself had been. The setting-out of Charles Larkyns for college, two years before, had suggested no other thought to Mr. Green's mind, than that a university was the natural sequence of a public school; and since Verdant had not been through the career of the one, he deemed him to be exempt from the other.