"He didn't answer for a moment. He seemed to be thinking hard. Then, in the same cold, absent manner---- "'No.' Just that and nothing more." Jill stopped, her attention caught by the first glimpse of the open heath as the car breasted the last rise, and the wind came blustering in their teeth. "Oh, _isn't_ it lovely here!" She drew a deep breath of content. "Straight across?" McTaggart asked. She nodded her head, her eyes fixed on the far-away vista of trees, bare but shrouded in a violet haze. Over Hendon a misty sun was veiled in banks of gray clouds, but high in the sky a wide streak showed of a pale and tender bird's egg blue. "Well--what happened next?" McTaggart brought her, with a sudden drop, back to earth. "Oh ... I felt so relieved I just rushed ahead, you know. I told him he was a regular brick! And then, as he seemed a bit surprised, I explained about the Black Book--how a third entry now might end in my being sent down for good.' "'Good Heavens!' he said, 'I'd no idea,' and, really, he looked sympathetic. So _I_ said I was awfully sorry that we'd all of us played the goat. Well, what d'you think _he_ said then? quite simply--without 'side.' "'It's partly my own fault, too ... I'm not popular, I know--I can't get the atmosphere...' "You might have knocked me down with a feather!" "I'll bet anything you explained it!" McTaggart smiled to himself. "Why, of course I did." Jill stared at him. "I felt so awfully sorry. I said: "'Look here, sir, we'd like you all right if only you'd treat us more like men. It's not a girl's school, it's a college. And lots of us are working hard to earn our own living when we leave. So, perhaps, we think a good deal of the ... usefulness of our work. We like to feel the Professors know it, and help and ... respect us--just like men. In the senior lectures most of us, too, are in our third year course, you know, and you treat us exactly like the juniors! It's all wrong, sir, don't you see?'" "Bravo you! ..." McTaggart cried. "How did he take your ... candid help?" "He said: 'Thank you--I see the point--you aren't Freshers any more. And, perhaps ... Yes--the manner's wrong.' Then, quite suddenly, he laughed. 'The Oxford man--ah! eh, Miss Uniacke?' "I felt rather a fool then, Peter." Irrelevantly, she added: "He's got nice eyes when he laughs." "Oh ... Jill, Jill!" McTaggart's glance swerved from the steering wheel aside to find his little friend's face flushed beyond the excuse of the breeze. "Anyhow, we shook hands," Jill went on hurriedly, "and he said, 'Well I hope at the next lecture I shall find a more attentive class.'" "So I told him _I'd_ see to that! and I went downstairs and talked to the girls. And the next Friday we were good. You could hear a pin fall," Jill laughed. "I must say he looked nervous but, when the lecture was over and he stood on the platform ready to leave, Judy got up and gave the signal--'Three Cheers for Mr. Jackson.'