"We ought to shake hands, oughtn't we? It's the English way, isn't it?" Craik stifled a guffaw, and his awkward sensations began to go. "Mr. Cobbe, would you mind getting me an ice?" Cobbe's face wore an odd expression as he bowed and disappeared. Maple Fetters fluttered off to other occupations. Craik and Miss Lamb were left alone, and they began to walk with vague steps, and, on the lady's part, vague, unfinished scraps of conversation, through the sunshine along the garden path. Then stopping, and resting her hands on her parasol, she said, as if they were old friends already, "I wonder--would you take me into your old College cloisters? I have heard so much about them, and it wouldn't be wrong for us to run away from the party for just a few minutes? I should so love to! You won't mind?" "Oh dear, no!" Craik exclaimed. "Certainly we can go. It's through the quadrangle. But Mr. Cobbe, will he find you?" "Oh, he'll know where I am; and if he doesn't it's no matter. Come!" They went under the garden tower, and through the little old quadrangle, into the entrance of the cloisters. Of the history and traditions of the place, and of the whole College, Craik spoke almost with eloquence, while Miss Lamb listened with murmurs and interruptions of enthusiastic interest. The cloisters, as he explained, were once the cloisters of a monastery; the tower was the monastery tower; and the bell that hung there, and twice a day rang the College into chapel, was the bell that once sounded for the matins and vespers of the monks. "What! monks? Did monks really once live here? Oh, how I should have liked to have seen it then!" "Ah, but you couldn't, you know. They never allowed ladies inside the gates." "How silly!" "Yes," Craik said, smiling, "wasn't it silly?" They walked with slow steps around the shadowed cloisters, and Miss Lamb talked idly of the party. It was such a pretty party, so amusing. Did he often go to garden parties? No! How odd! She did--to ever so many, in America, in London, and now in Oxford. The Oxford parties were the best though. Then suddenly she cried in a changed voice, "But how frivolous I am, Mr. Craik! I can see that you are quite shocked." "Shocked! oh no, not at all." "Well, then, you ought to be! Imagine being so frivolous in a solemn place like this. Tell me, you study philosophy, don't you? It must be splendid; I do envy you so! When I am in a place like Oxford I feel so frivolous, somehow, and ignorant. Why, I feel afraid--" Then after a moment's charming hesitation, "Yes, quite afraid to talk to clever people. You mustn't mind what I say, will you?" "But I'm not clever!" he exclaimed. "Why--" "Oh, but Mr. Craik! Why, you've written a book!" "But that's nothing. And it's only a sort of study, nothing really." "I wish I could read it." "Oh no! don't try; it's a stupid thing, only meant for students."