...  If you stand a lantern under a tree every insect in the forest creeps up to it—­a curious assembly, since though they scramble and swing and knock their heads against the glass, they seem to have no purpose—­something senseless inspires them.  One gets tired of watching them, as they amble round the lantern and blindly tap as if for admittance, one large toad being the most besotted of any and shouldering his way through the rest.  Ah, but what’s that?  A terrifying volley of pistol-shots rings out—­cracks sharply; ripples spread—­ silence laps smooth over sound.  A tree—­a tree has fallen, a sort of death in the forest.  After that, the wind in the trees sounds melancholy.

But this service in King’s College Chapel—­why allow women to take part in it?  Surely, if the mind wanders (and Jacob looked extraordinarily vacant, his head thrown back, his hymn-book open at the wrong place), if the mind wanders it is because several hat shops and cupboards upon cupboards of coloured dresses are displayed upon rush-bottomed chairs.  Though heads and bodies may be devout enough, one has a sense of individuals—­some like blue, others brown; some feathers, others pansies and forget-me-nots.  No one would think of bringing a dog into church.  For though a dog is all very well on a gravel path, and shows no disrespect to flowers, the way he wanders down an aisle, looking, lifting a paw, and approaching a pillar with a purpose that makes the blood run cold with horror (should you be one of a congregation—­alone, shyness is out of the question), a dog destroys the service completely.  So do these women—­though separately devout, distinguished, and vouched for by the theology, mathematics, Latin, and Greek of their husbands.  Heaven knows why it is.  For one thing, thought Jacob, they’re as ugly as sin.

Now there was a scraping and murmuring.  He caught Timmy Durrant’s eye; looked very sternly at him; and then, very solemnly, winked.

“Waverley,” the villa on the road to Girton was called, not that Mr. Plumer admired Scott or would have chosen any name at all, but names are useful when you have to entertain undergraduates, and as they sat waiting for the fourth undergraduate, on Sunday at lunch-time, there was talk of names upon gates.

“How tiresome,” Mrs. Plumer interrupted impulsively.  “Does anybody know Mr. Flanders?”

Mr. Durrant knew him; and therefore blushed slightly, and said, awkwardly, something about being sure—­looking at Mr. Plumer and hitching the right leg of his trouser as he spoke.  Mr. Plumer got up and stood in front of the fireplace.  Mrs. Plumer laughed like a straightforward friendly fellow.  In short, anything more horrible than the scene, the setting, the prospect, even the May garden being afflicted with chill sterility and a cloud choosing that moment to cross the sun, cannot be imagined.  There was the garden, of course.  Every one at the same moment looked at it.  Owing to the cloud, the leaves ruffled grey, and the sparrows—­there were two sparrows.