Bad, however, as my father’s circumstances were at this time, and little pleasant in any way as was our life in the farm-house at Harrow Weald, I remember an excursion made by him and me, the only object of which, I think, could have been amusement. My father had an old friend named Skinner (no relative of the vicar of my uncle Meetkerke’s parish of Julians, of whom I have spoken in a former chapter), who was the rector of a parish near Bath. He was a widower, living with an only daughter, and was, I remember, an enthusiastic student of ancient British history in connection with the localities around him. One of the two days we remained with him was devoted to a visit to Cheddar Cliffs. Mr. Skinner mounted us, and we rode a _partie carrée_, he and my father, Miss Skinner and I, some twelve or fourteen miles to Cheddar. She was a pretty, bright girl, and I found her a charming companion in a scramble to the top of the cliffs overlooking the gorge through which the road runs. We became, indeed, such good friends, that, on our homeward ride, we gradually drew away from our respective parents and reached home a good half hour before they did--which procured for us both a scolding for knocking the horses up. It was roughish riding, too, as I remember, for the road was very different from what I found it some months ago, when, revisiting Cheddar, I saw on the top of the hill a notice to bicycle riders that the descent is dangerous for them. CHAPTER IX. As the year wore on without any prospect of a vacancy at New College, it became necessary to decide what should be done as regards sending me to the university. My father was very ill able to support the expense of this. But I had received from Winchester two exhibitions--all that the college had in its power to bestow--and he was very unwilling that I should be unable to avail myself of them. Concomitantly with continued increase in the frequency and intensity of his headaches, my father’s irritability of temper had increased to a degree which made him a very difficult man to live with. For simple assent to his utterances of an argumentative nature did not satisfy him, he _would_ be argued with. Yet argument produced irritability leading to scenes of painful violence, which I had reason to fear hastened the return of his suffering. But the greatest good, in his opinion, that could then be achieved for me, was, that I should have an university education; and this he was steadfastly minded to procure for me at any cost of pressure and privation. And then the question arose, at what college should I matriculate?