“To-morrow,” he said, “we will go even unto the Oval, and watch the gentlemen and players. It is strange that to play cricket is the most doleful of human pursuits, and to watch it one of the most delightful. When I grow up I shall keep twenty-two men who shall play cricket before me, as Salome danced before Herod. They shall play a perpetual match, which shall never come to a world without end. Amen. Have some more kidneys, Reggie? A few of our small kidneys would not hurt you. Waiter, bring some more kidneys. Kidneys are not attractive to the eye, but the proof of them is in the eating. I eat them because they are so comfortable, as the Psalmist says. By the way, has Sir John Lubbock put the eating of kidneys among his _Pleasures of Life_? I shall write a book called _The Sorrows of Death_ as a companion volume.” “Do; and have it set to music by Mendelssohn.” “Mendelssohn is dead, and the kidneys are dead,” said the profane Babe. “Hullo there’s Stewart. He looks like a man out of the _Yellow Book_ by Aubrey Beardsley. I wish I could look as if Aubrey Beardsley had drawn me; shall I ask him to supper, Reggie? I wonder what he’s doing at the Savoy?” But Mr. Stewart had got a Cabinet Minister in hand just for the present, and it was half an hour or so before he joined them; even then it took him ten minutes to get through the amiability of Cabinet Ministers, before descending to more sublunary topics. But when he descended, as the Babe said afterwards, he came down with a run, and talked about music-halls and other things. He was most sympathetic with the Babe’s misfortune in being unable to stop up for May week, and inveighed against the government and management of the University generally. “It is incredible to me,” he said, “perfectly incredible that so much pedantry and narrowness can be compressed into so small a place. There is not a single one of my colleagues whom I could call a man of the world. I was saying just now to my dear friend Abbotsbury who has been very strongly urging me to stand for Cambridge in Parliament, that I am really quite unfit, perfectly unfit to represent the University. I know nothing whatever about my colleagues, and I disapprove of all I know of them. Take your own case. You are of years of discretion, my dear Babe, and if you choose to dress in a tablecloth, no one has any right to prevent you. They wouldn’t have any right to stop you if you chose to dress in two--less right in fact. I’m sure you looked charming in a tablecloth. Why should the Dean of your college exercise jurisdiction over your dress? He is no Prince Regent. For he dresses himself in a cake hat and a tail coat, which is perhaps the least becoming style of dress which can be conceived. Yet he isn’t sent down for it. Why should he be allowed to make the Great Court of Trinity hideous, and you be sent down for--for making it beautiful?” “The Babe did a skirt dance down Malcolm Street,” remarked Reggie, “and it was a windy night.”