Then, with a rather constrained air and a touch of nervous cordiality, Peter turned to his father and took his hand. "How are you, father?" he asked. "You look fine." Dr. Hunter Guthrie swallowed something and gave a murmur which remained incoherent. Before he could pull himself together, Peter was hugging his sister, who squealed like a pig from the tightness of this man's mighty grasp. And then the brother came in for it and winced with pain and pleasure as his hand was taken in a vise-like grip. "Hello, Graham!" "Hello, Peter!" And then everybody except Peter burst out laughing. He stood in front of the fair girl, with his mouth wide open, and held out his hand and said: "I was going to hunt the whole place for you,--I beg your pardon." It was when he drew back, with his face and neck the color of a beet root, that the laughter reached its climax. Belle Guthrie was the first to find her voice. "Well, Peter," she said, "that's going some. Is an introduction superfluous in Oxford? Where did you meet Betty Townsend?" "I haven't met her," said Peter. "I saw her this morning in the High for a second--" He ran his finger round his collar and moved from one foot to the other and shifted his great shoulders. No man on this earth had ever looked so uncomfortable. And then, with consummate coolness, Betty Townsend came to the rescue. "Just after we arrived this morning," she said, "and you were all buying picture post-cards, I passed Mr. Guthrie when I was walking along the High Street with Graham's friend. I recognized him from the photographs that you have at home, and I think he must have heard me ask, 'Who's that?' I naturally gave him a friendly look. That's all." "I didn't catch the friendly look," said Peter. But he did catch the friendly tone and stored it up among his treasures. Then he suddenly stirred himself, being host, picked up his mother and placed her on his elaborate sofa; gave his best arm-chair to his father; waved his sister into the window-seat with her friend, and tilted Graham into a deck chair. Standing in the middle of the room, beaming with pride, he said: "How in thunder did you get here so soon? Your wire said that you were coming to tea, and I was going to meet the train leaving Paddington at three-thirty. Gee! This is the best thing that ever happened! Will you lunch here?" "Oh, no, dear!" said Mrs. Guthrie. "So many of us will worry your landlady." Then out came one of Peter's huge laughs. "Worry my landlady? One look at Mrs. Brownstack would show you that she got over being worried before the great wind. Why she's kept lodgings for undergraduates for twenty years. It's the same thing as saying that she's spent the greater part of her life sitting on the top of Vesuvius. I can give you beer, beef, pickles, biscuits, cake, swipes they call coffee, some corking Nougat and three brands of cigarettes."