"I shall be obliged to make a row about it," he said to himself. Service in the parental establishment left much to be desired. When the things came from the wash they were not fit to be seen. There was not a trace in them of the stiffness and glaze which are the artistic triumphs of the professional laundress. He who knew what was due to himself as a corps-student felt it his duty not to neglect his personal appearance, but to keep up the dignity of his "badges" daily and hourly in face of the country bumpkins. The eldest of nine olive branches, which had sprung from the nuptials of old Pastor Brenckenberg, he had gone to the University in his nineteenth year, it was vaguely reported, to study the dead and Oriental tongues. Nothing more definite was ever gleaned about the calling he had chosen, for he did not consider it seemly to discuss such trivialities. He left that sort of thing to the "swats," as he himself put it. It was quite undeniably certain, however, that he had fought fourteen duels, and had been "gashed" nine times; that he had been concerned in two scandals and a _praemisses praemittendis_ intrigue; and that he had cultivated the drinking of beer to a fine art. Neither could it be disputed that he had been captain of two _élite_ student clubs, _i.e_., the Westphalians and the Normans. He boasted, therefore, the title after his name, Guestphaliæ (XX), Normanneaque (X), and thus he figured on the bills of exchange and promissory notes which his father received periodically, accompanied by a polite request for payment, till that worthy declared it must now stop, and that the young lardy-da would not get a brass farthing more out of him. He had remained firm, and his mother's tears and intercession for her darling had been in vain. One fine day at the beginning of February, in consequence of the paternal hardness of heart, the son and heir arrived at the parsonage and announced his intention of staying there for the present. In the admiring eyes of his mother he blazed out as the possessor of a light, braided suit, the coat of which was very narrow, and the trousers very wide; of ribbons and badges denoting the colours of his corps; an ivory scarf pin in the shape of the corps monogram; a gold bangle with a sham thaler representing St. George and the dragon--also bearing the corps monogram attached to it; a swagger walking-stick, on the knob of which the monogram was engraved; a note-book full of the eternal monogram, and a purse which contained no silver except the monogram on the clasp. For the rest, his trunk had little else in it save a book of students' drinking-songs, bound in calf, a few bills of exchange, a broken meerschaum cigar-holder, and a whole pile of dirty, ragged linen, marked above his name with the monogram in shot floss silk.