On this particular afternoon we had both just bicycled back together from lunching with Parker's aunt at Ely, and she had given me a great bunch of yellow roses for Parker and a melon, and we were to drop them at Parker's. And here we were at Parker's, and apparently he was out or asleep, and not to be waked by Barrett's best cat-call. And as we stood at his door, Barrett clutching the melon, I found the roses were not in my hand. Where on earth had I put them down? At Maitland's door, perhaps, where we had run up expecting to find him, or at Bradley's, where we had stopped a moment. Neither of us could remember. I was just going back for them when whom should we see coming sailing across the court in cap and gown but old Maitland in his best attitude, chin up, book in hand, signet ring showing. Parker's aunt used to chaff us for calling him old, and said we thought everyone of forty-five was tottering on the brink of the tomb. And so they mostly are, I think, if they are Dons. I have heard other men who have gone down say that you leave them tottering, and you come back ten years later and there they are, still tottering. Barrett said Maitland did everything as if his portrait was being taken doing it, and that his effect on others was never absent from his mind. I don't know about that, but certainly in his talk he was always trying to impress on us his own aspect of himself. If it was a fine morning and he wished to be thought to be enjoying it, he would rub his hands and say there was not a happier creature on God's earth than himself. He pined to be thought unconventional, and after drawing our attention to some microscopic delinquency, he would regret that there had been no fairy godmother at hand at his christening to endow him with a proper deference for social conventions. If he gave a small donation to any college scheme the success of which was not absolutely assured, he would shake his head and say: "I know very well that all you youngsters laugh in your sleeve at the way I lead forlorn hopes, but it is a matter of temperament. I can't help it."