The world! had I been a boy I would have been an adventurer, and sought my fortunes in toils, and fights, and travel: but it was strange to look round upon this Cambridge drawing-room, and think of it and of its well-dressed, commonplace company as representing the great stormy universe, of which I had my grand thoughts, like every other inexperienced spirit. There was a large company, I thought, being unused to evening parties. Mr. Osborne and a few more of his rank and standing, scholars who looked shorn and diminished for want of their habitual cap and gown, some young undergraduates, and a background of county people made up the number--and a stray lion from London, who had been caught in the neighborhood, was reported to be somewhere in the room. My chaperone, Mrs. Boulder, was a professor's wife, and herself a scientific person, who seldom condescended to talk of anything but literature, geology, and the gossip of the colleges; she was very much interested about this unknown author. From the sofa where she had established herself, and where her professional black satin swept its ample folds over my pretty dress, she was constantly thrusting her head into the groups of people who gathered before her, searching with her spectacles for somebody who might be the distinguished visitor. "That must be he, talking to the Master," she exclaimed, "no, there is another stranger, I declare, a very remarkable looking personage, beside Mr. Selwyn. I wonder why nobody brings him to me. Mr. Osborne--Mr. Osborne! Professor! I cannot make any of them hear me; my love, would you mind stepping to Mr. Osborne? There he is talking to that very old Fellow. Call him to me." I rose with considerable trepidation to obey--an old Fellow, it must be understood, is by no means a contemptuous expression in a University town; and this was a very old white-haired man with whom Mr. Osborne was engaged. He held out his hand when I came up to him, and looked at me with a glance of pleased satisfaction, almost as if he were proud of me, which warmed my heart in spite of myself. I told my message, but he made no haste to obey it. He only nodded his head, with a smile, in answer to Mrs. Boulder's urgent beckoning. "Should _you_ like to see him, Hester?" said Mr. Osborne, "there he is, that young dandy there, among all the young ladies--he prefers worshippers to critics, like a sensible man. Should you like to hear the great lion roar, Hester?" "I am very glad to have seen him," said I, "but he has enough of worshippers. No, thank you: but Mrs. Boulder wants to see him, Mr. Osborne." "Presently," he said, once more nodding at that tantalized and impatient lady, "presently--and how do you like the party, Hester?" "I like very well to look at it," said I, glancing round the handsome, well-proportioned, well-lighted room, "it is a picture, but I do not know any one here."