But his mood was one of delicious _recueillement_. Unlike so many of his fellow-freshmen, whose _savoir-faire_ was sadly to seek, Gaveston had donned neither dinner jacket nor tails, but over one shoulder of his well-cut Norfolk coat had negligently flung a simple but carefully torn commoner’s gown. He, of all men, could surely face sans apprehension the ordeal of a first public appearance in Wallace. And the Wallace manner? But Gaveston had no need to worry over how best to acquire the famous manner, at once the jest and paragon of every cabinet since Balfour’s, of every chancellory from Berlin to Uganda. No, that far-flung triumph of the collegiate system was a stuff bred in the very marrow of the ffoulis’s bones. Why, only that morning he had been obliged to remind the President of the college of that fact. And he smiled as he recalled the trifling but significant incident--how the venerable scholar had peered up at him from his pile of matriculation papers. “I … er … liked your essay, Mr. ffoulis,” he had said, with no doubt the kindliest of intentions, “very much. In fact I almost think … er … you were made for … er … Wallace.” But Gav had replied with caustic courtesy. “I almost think Wallace was made for me, sir.” And in a few well-chosen phrases he had reminded the President that the males of his family on the distaff side had matriculated there ever since the days (he had rightly hesitated to qualify them as spacious) of Elizabeth, that four of his ancestral portraits were hung upon the dark[2] oak panelling of the Wallace Hall, that a slender but conspicuous lancet-window in Wallace Chapel was blazoned with his gules argent, that---- [2] The oak of Wallace Hall is curiously pale (LIT. EXEC.). But enough! That was the bell. Gaveston left his window seat, and slowly crossed the arboreous lawns towards the creeper-clad steps of that historic Hall. Yes, for him alone amid that nervously jostling crowd of freshmen, to dine in this Hall that had nurtured the rulers and sages of England down the fairest centuries of her fame, was an experience both homely and familiar. It was something as easily acceptable as, say, luncheon in that white-panelled breakfast-room in Half Moon Street, with his own mother’s dear delightful vaguenesses floating musically across the rose-laden table. (“Gav dear, if you weren’t so clever, I’d love you so much more!”--“And if you weren’t so stupid, Mother dearest, I’d love you so much less!”--He remembered their tirelessly enchanting badinage over the gold-rimmed coffee cups down long summer afternoons.…) For, after all was said and done, the great secret of Wallace was to be surprised at nothing. And Gaveston never was. It was with him an instinct (atavistic, he supposed).