“Can’t you leave Annette to bring the luggage, and let us walk up?” said Nora.

Connie assented, and the two girls were soon in the long and generally crowded street leading to the Cornmarket.  Nora gave rapidly a little necessary information.  Term had just begun, and Oxford was “dreadfully full.”  She had got another job of copying work at the Bodleian, for which she was being paid by the University Press, and what with that and the work for her coming exam, she was “pretty driven.”  But that was what suited her.  Alice and her mother were “all right.”

“And Uncle Ewen?” said Connie.

Nora paused a moment.

“Well, you won’t think he looks any the better for his holiday,” she said at last, with an attempt at a laugh.  “And of course he’s doing ten times too much work.  Hang work!  I loathe work:  I want to ’do nothing forever and ever.’”

“Why don’t you set about it then?” laughed Connie.

“Because—­” Nora began impetuously; and then shut her lips.  She diverged to the subject of Mr. Pryce.  They had not seen or heard anything of him for weeks, she said, till he had paid them an evening call, the night before, the first evening of the new term.

Connie interrupted.

“Oh, but that reminds me,” she said eagerly, “I’ve got an awfully nice letter—­to-day—­from Lord Glaramara.  Mr. Pryce is to go up and see him.”

Nora whistled.

“You have!  Well, that settles it.  He’ll now graciously allow himself to propose.  And then we shall all pretend to be greatly astonished.  Alice will cry, and mother will say she ’never expected to lose her daughter so soon.’  What a humbug everybody is!” said the child, bitterly, with more emphasis than grammar.

“But suppose he doesn’t get anything!” cried Connie, alarmed at such a sudden jump from the possible to the certain.

“Oh, but he will!  He’s the kind of person that gets things,” said Nora contemptuously.  “Well, we wanted a bit of good news!”

Connie jumped at the opening.

“Dear Nora!—­have things been going wrong?  You look awfully tired.  Do tell me!”

Nora checked herself at once.  “Oh, not much more than usual,” she said repellently.  “And what about you, Connie?  Aren’t you very bored to be coming back here, after all your grand times?”

They had emerged into the Corn.  Before them, was the old Church of St. Mary Magdalen, and the modern pile of Balliol.  In the distance stretched the Broad, over which the October evening was darkening fast; the Sheldonian in the far distance, with its statued railing; and the gates of Trinity on the left.  The air was full of bells, and the streets of undergraduates; a stream of young men taking fresh possession, as it were, of the grey city, which was their own as soon as they chose to come back to it.  The Oxford damp, the Oxford mist, was everywhere, pierced by lamps, and window-lights, and the last red of a stormy sunset.