Among them, close to me, was the tall man who had upset me; and a very handsome, high-bred looking man he was. I tried to slip by, but he recognized me instantly, and spoke. "I hope I didn't hurt you much, Really, when I spoke so sharply, I did not see that you were not a gownsman!" The speech, as I suppose now, was meant courteously enough. It indicated that though he might allow himself liberties with men of his own class, he was too well bred to do so with me. But in my anger I saw nothing but the words, "not a gownsman." Why should he see that I was not a gownsman? Because I was shabbier?--(and my clothes, over and above the ducking they had had, were shabby); or more plebeian in appearance (whatsoever that may mean)? or wanted something else, which the rest had about them, and I had not? Why should he know that I was not a gownsman? I did not wish, of course, to be a gentleman, and an aristocrat; but I was nettled, nevertheless, at not being mistaken for one; and answered, sharply enough-- "No matter whether I am hurt or not. It serves me right for getting among you cursed aristocrats." "Box the cad's ears, Lord Lynedale," said a dirty fellow with a long pole--a cad himself, I should have thought. "Let him go home and ask his mammy to hang him out to dry," said another. The lord (for so I understood he was) looked at me with an air of surprise and amusement, which may have been good-natured enough in him, but did not increase the good-nature in me. "Tut, tut, my good fellow. I really am very sorry for having upset you. Here's half-a-crown to cover damages." "Better give it me than a muff like that," quoth he of the long pole; while I answered, surlily enough, that I wanted neither him nor his money, and burst through the crowd toward Cambridge. I was so shabby and plebeian, then, that people actually dare offer me money! Intolerable! The reader may say that I was in a very unwholesome and unreasonable frame of mind. So I was. And so would he have been in my place. CHAPTER XIII. THE LOST IDOL FOUND. On my return, I found my cousin already at home, in high spirits at having, as he informed me, "bumped the first Trinity." I excused myself for my dripping state, simply by saying that I had slipped into the river. To tell him the whole of the story, while the fancied insult still rankled fresh in me, was really too disagreeable both to my memory and my pride. Then came the question, "What had brought me to Cambridge?" I told him all, and he seemed honestly to sympathize with my misfortunes.