Nora, however, had not come in to gossip.  She was in a white heat.

“Father!—­we ought not to let Connie furnish her own rooms!”

“But, my dear, who thinks of her doing any such thing?  What do you mean?” And Dr. Hooper took his pipe out of his mouth, and stood protesting.

“She’s gone out, she and Annette.  They slipped out just now when mother came in to you; and I’m certain they’ve gone to B’s”—­the excited girl named a well-known Oxford furniture shop—­“to buy all sorts of things.”

“Well, after all, it’s my house!” said the Reader, smiling.  “Connie will have to ask my leave first.”

“Oh, she’ll persuade you!” cried Nora, standing before her father with her hands behind her.  “She’ll make us all do what she wants.  She’ll be like a cuckoo in the nest.  She’ll be too strong for us.”

Ewen Hooper put out a soothing hand, and patted his youngest daughter on the shoulder.

“Wait a bit, my dear.  And when Connie comes back just ask her to step in here a moment.  And now will you both please be gone—­at once?—­quick once?—­quick march!”

And taking his wife and daughter by the shoulders, he turned them both forcibly out, and sat down to make his final preparations for a lecture that afternoon on the “feminism” of Euripides.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Connie Bledlow and her maid were walking quickly down the Broad towards the busy Cornmarket with its shops.  It was a brilliant morning—­one of those east wind days when all clouds are swept from the air, and every colour of the spring burns and flashes in the sun.  Every outline was clear; every new-leafed tree stood radiant in the bright air.  The grey or black college walls had lost all the grimness of winter, they were there merely to bring out the blue of the sky, the yellow gold, the laburnum, the tossing white of the chestnuts.  The figures, even, passing in the streets, seemed to glitter with the trees and the buildings.  The white in the women’s dresses; the short black gowns and square caps of the undergraduates; the gay colours in the children’s frocks; the overhanging masses of hawthorn and lilac that here and there thrust themselves, effervescent and rebellious, through and over college walls:—­everything shimmered and shone in the May sunlight.  The air too was tonic and gay, a rare thing for Oxford; and Connie, refreshed by sleep, walked with such a buoyant and swinging step that her stout maid could hardly keep up with her.  Many a passer-by observed her.  Men on their way to lecture, with battered caps and gowns slung round their necks, threw sharp glances at the tall girl in black, with the small pale face, so delicately alive, and the dark eyes that laughed—­aloof and unabashed—­at all they saw.

“What boys they are!” said Constance presently, making a contemptuous lip.  “They ought to be still in the nursery.”

“What—­the young men in the caps, my lady?”