“Rather badly, I’m afraid, sir.”

“Well, I shall see you at dinner to-night,” said the Principal dismissing Mark with a gesture before he had time even to look surprised.  This was a new perplexity, for Mark divined from the Principal’s manner that he had entirely forgotten that the scholarship examination was over and that the candidates had already dined with him.  He went into the lodge and asked the porter’s advice.

“The Principal’s a most absent-minded gentleman,” said the porter.  “Most absent-minded, he is.  He’s the talk of Oxford sometimes is the Principal.  What do you think he went and did only last term.  Why, he was having some of the senior men to tea and was going to put some coal on the fire with the tongs and some sugar in his cup.  Bothered if he didn’t put the sugar in the fire and a lump of coal in his cup.  It didn’t so much matter him putting sugar in the fire.  That’s all according, as they say.  But fancy—­well, I tell you we had a good laugh over it in the lodge when the gentlemen came out and told me.”

“Ought I to explain that I’ve already dined with him?” Mark asked.

“Are you in any what you might call immediate hurry to get away?” the porter asked judicially.

“I’m in no hurry at all.  I’d like to stay a bit longer.”

“Then you’d better go to dinner with him again to-night and stay in college over the Sunday.  I’ll take it upon myself to explain to the Dean why you’re still here.  If it had been tea I should have said ’don’t bother about it,’ but dinner’s another matter, isn’t it?  And he always has dinner laid for two or more in case he’s asked anybody and forgotten.”

Thus it came about that for the second time Mark dined with the Principal, who disconcerted him by saying when he arrived: 

“I remember now that you dined with me the night before last.  You should have told me.  I forget these things.  But never mind, you’d better stay now you’re here.”

The Principal read second-hand book catalogues all through dinner just as he had done two nights ago, and he only interrupted his perusal to inquire in courtly tones if Mark would take another glass of wine.  The only difference between now and the former occasion was the absence of poor Emmett and his paroxysms.  After dinner with some misgivings if he ought not to leave his host to himself Mark followed him upstairs to the library.  The principal was one of those scholars who live in an atmosphere of their own given off by old calf-bound volumes and who apparently can only inhale the air of the world in which ordinary men move when they are smoking their battered old pipes.  Mark sitting opposite to him by the fireside was tempted to pour out the history of himself and Emmett, to explain how he had come to make such a mess of the examination.  Perhaps if the Principal had alluded to his papers Mark would have found the courage to talk about himself; but the Principal was