My brother-in-law sighed.

“I used to do my boots up like that, when an agent in Germany.  In that way no one could assault me from behind.  Those detailed to stab me in the back were nonplussed and in several cases shot for incompetence.”

A quarter of an hour later we slid over Magdalen Bridge.

* * * * *

The venerable city was unchanged.  That same peculiar dignity, which no impertinence can scathe, that same abiding peace, the handiwork of labouring centuries, that immemorial youth, which drains the cups of Time and pays no reckoning—­three wonders of the world, rose up to meet us visitors.

Oxford has but two moods.

This day she was allegro.  The Sunshine Holyday of Spring had won her from her other soberer state, and Mirth was in all her ways.  Her busy streets were bright, her blistered walls glowed and gave back the warmth vouchsafed them, her spires and towers were glancing, vivid against the blue:  the unexpected green, that sprawled ragged upon scaly parapets, thrust boldly out between the reverend mansions and smothered up the songs of architects, trembled to meet its patron:  the blowing meadows beamed, gates lifted up their heads, retired quadrangles smiled in their sleep, the very streams were lazy, and gardens, walks, spaces and alleyed lanes were all betimes a-Maying.

Perhaps because it was St. George’s Day, ghosts that the grey old stones can conjure up, at Fancy’s whim came thronging.  The state of Kings rode by familiar, shrewd virgin Majesty swayed in a litter down the roaring streets, and the unruly pomp of a proud cardinal wended its scarlet way past kneeling citizens.  Cavaliers ruffled it in the chequered walks, prelates and sages loaded the patient air with discourse, and phantom tuck of drum ushered a praise-God soldiery to emptied bursaries.  With measured tread statesmen and scholars paced sober up and down the flags, absorbed in argument, poets roamed absent by, and Law and bustling Physic, learned and gowned and big with dignity, swept in and out the gates of colleges whose very fame, that spurred their young intent, they lived to magnify.

After a random drive about the city, in the course of which we visited St. John’s and Magdalen, we put the car in a garage and repaired to The Mitre for lunch.

Such other spectacles as we proposed to view lay more or less close together, and could be inspected more conveniently without the car, which claimed the constant vigilance of one of us just at the very times we least could spare it.

Fortified by the deference shown him by his scout, whom we had encountered while visiting his old rooms overlooking the Deer Park, my brother-in-law had in some measure succeeded—­so far as Jill and Agatha were concerned—­in investing his sojourn at Magdalen with an ill-merited dignity; and Daphne, Jonah and I were quite justifiably delighted when a prosperous-looking individual, with a slip in his waistcoat and a diamond ring, left his table and laid a fat hand familiarly upon Berry’s shoulder.