Martin got up at nine, inspected the tin bath which had an inch of icy water on its blackened, paintless bottom, and concluded that it was not inviting. However, moved by his fear of Galer and a desire not to win his scout's contempt at the outset, he splashed feebly with the water. He deferred shaving and went to look at his breakfast. In the fireplace he found two poached eggs beneath a tin cover. They had been standing for over an hour and had become solid, resembling jelly with a tough crust on the edge of it. The fire had been a failure, the kettle sat in obstinate silence, and Martin ultimately made tea with water that had not boiled. The result was a greenish beverage with shoals of tea-leaves floating on the surface. There were four solid boards of toast, once endued, presumably, with the crisp seductions of youth, and an immense roll whose spongy giblets would have beaten the strongest digestion. No one ever ate these monstrous things and what Galer did with them was another matter of conjecture. Some maintained that he fed his family on them neat: others that there was a permanent bread-and-butter pudding on the Galer menu. Martin had come up to Oxford firmly convinced that he was about to sink into Luxury's softest lap. He found that he had to live in two dingy rooms three storeys from the ground. The "bedder" had a tiny slot of a window opening on to the kitchens of a neighbouring college: the "sitter" was slightly larger but just as dark. All the furniture, for which a heavy rent was charged, had fallen into a state of gloomy squalor suggestive rather of Camberwell than of Mayfair. The carpet, whose flagrant ugliness of colour and design was obscured by the dirt of ages, had actually given way in places and everywhere there was dust. Galer, who, with the aid of a harassed boy, had charge of nine sets of rooms, had neither the time nor the inclination to do any cleaning. He flicked cupboards with a duster in a dilettante way from time to time but further than that he never went. Martin also discovered that the college did not contain hot baths and that the only method of procuring such a luxury was to heat a large can of water at his 'sitter' fire. All meals, except dinner, were brought through the open air across two quads and arrived in a tepid state; nor was this improved by the fact that Martin lived at the top of his stairs and had to wait till those below had been supplied. There was no service lift and no means of emptying slops on the stairs, and everything had to be carried up and down the tortuous steps, even the bath-water. But Galer would have been the last person to encourage the introduction of lifts; he was at least thorough in his Toryism. Dining in hall meant swallowing four abominably served courses in twenty minutes. "So this," thought Martin, "is the princely life," and he wondered whether he would suffer the same fate as Uncle Paul, who