The tap-room of the Red Unicorn was lighted by candles and a fireplace.  That is a simple thing to say, but it was not a simple thing for Mr. Wrenn to see.  As he observed the trembling shadows on the sanded floor he wriggled and excitedly murmured, “Gee!...  Gee whittakers!”

The shadows slipped in arabesques over the dust-gray floor and scampered as bravely among the rafters as though they were in such a tale as men told in believing days.  Rustics in smocks drank ale from tankards; and in a corner was snoring an ear-ringed peddler with his beetle-black head propped on an oilcloth pack.

Stamping in, chilly from the ride, Mr. Wrenn laughed aloud.  With a comfortable feeling on the side toward the fire he stuck his slight legs straight out before the old-time settle, looked devil-may-care, made delightful ridges on the sanded floor with his toe, and clapped a pewter pot on his knee with a small emphatic “Wop!” After about two and a quarter tankards he broke out, “Say, that peddler guy there, don’t he look like he was a gipsy—­you know—­sneaking through the hedges around the manner-house to steal the earl’s daughter, huh?”

“Yes....  You’re a romanticist, then, I take it?”

“Yes, I guess I am.  Kind of.  Like to read romances and stuff.”  He stared at Mittyford beseechingly.  “But, say—­say, I wonder why—­Somehow, I haven’t enjoyed Oxford and the rest of the places like I ought to.  See, I’d always thought I’d be simply nutty about the quatrangles and stuff, but I’m afraid they’re too highbrow for me.  I hate to own up, but sometimes I wonder if I can get away with this traveling stunt.”

Mittyford, the magnificent, had mixed ale and whisky punch.  He was mellowly instructive: 

“Do you know, I’ve been wondering just what you would get out of all this.  You really have a very fine imagination of a sort, you know, but of course you’re lacking in certain factual bases.  As I see it, your metier would be to travel with a pleasant wife, the two of you hand in hand, so to speak, looking at the more obvious public buildings and plesaunces—­avenues and plesuances.  There must be a certain portion of the tripper class which really has the ability `for to admire and for to see.’”

Dr. Mittyford finished his second toddy and with a wave of his hand presented to Mr. Wrenn the world and all the plesaunces thereof, for to see, though not, of course, to admire Mittyfordianly.

“But—­what are you to do now about Oxford?  Well, I’m afraid you’re taken into captivity a bit late to be trained for that sort of thing.  Do about Oxford?  Why, go back, master the world you understand.  By the way, have you seen my book on Saxon Derivatives? Not that I’m prejudiced in its favor, but it might give you a glimmering of what this difficile thing `culture’ really is.”