“Well, thank God, I’ve got you in!” said Falloden gloomily, as he shut the door behind the last of them.

* * * * *

“How Duggy does hustle us!  I’ve had nothing of a tea!” said Roger, looking resentfully, his mouth full of cake, at his elder brother, who was already beginning to take out his watch, to bid his mother and sisters resume their discarded jackets, and to send a scout for a four-wheeler.

But Falloden was inexorable.  He tore his sister Nelly, a soft fluffy creature of seventeen, away from the shy attentions of the second-year man, scoffed in disgust at Trix’s desire for chocolates after a Gargantuan meal, and declared that they would all be late for the Eights, if any more gorging was allowed.  His mother rose obediently.  To be seen with such a son in the crowded Oxford streets filled her with pride.  She could have walked beside him for hours.

At the college gate, Trix pinched her brother’s arm.

“Well, Duggy, say it!”

“Say what, you little scug?”

“‘Thank God, I’ve got you out!’” laughed the child, laying her cheek against his coat-sleeve.  “That’s what you’re thinking.  You know you are.  I say, Duggy, you do look jolly in those colours!”

“Don’t talk rot!” grumbled Falloden, but he winked at her in brotherly fashion, and Trix was more than happy.  Like her mother, she believed that Douglas was simply the handsomest and cleverest fellow in the world.  When he scolded it was better than other people’s praise, and when he gave you a real private wink, it raised a sister to the skies.  On such soil does male arrogance grow!

Soon they were in the stream of people crossing Christ Church river on their way to the boats.  The May sunshine lay broad on the buttercup meadows, on the Christ Church elms, on the severe and blackened front of Corpus, on the long gabled line of Merton.  The river glittered in the distance, and towards it the crowd of its worshippers—­young girls in white, young men in flannels, elderly fathers and mothers from a distance, and young fathers and mothers from the rising tutorial homes of Oxford—­made their merry way.  Falloden looked in all directions for the Hooper party.  A new anxiety and eagerness were stirring in him which he resented, which he tried to put down.  He did not wish, he did not intend, if he could help it, to be too much in love with anybody.  He was jealous of his own self-control, and intensely proud of his own strength of will, as he might have been of a musical or artistic gift.  It was his particular gift, and he would not have it weakened.  He had seen men do the most idiotic things for love.  He did not intend to do such things.  Love should be strictly subordinate to a man’s career; women should be subordinate.