Before we came away, Lewie, I went up for a day to Oxford to
see about some things, and stopped a night there. I haven't been down
long, and yet I knew nobody at the club except the treasurer, and he had
nothing to say to me except to ask after you. I went to dinner with the
dons at the high table, and I nearly perished of the blues. Little
Riddell chirped about my profession, and that bounder Jackson, who was
of our year, pretended that he had been your bosom friend. I got so
bored that I left early and wandered back to the club. Somebody was
making a racket in our old rooms in the High, windows open, you know,
and singing. I stopped to look at them, and then they started, 'Willie
brewed a peck o' maut,' and, 'pon my soul, I had to come away. Couldn't
stand it. It reminded me so badly of you and Arthur and old John
Lambert, and all the honest men that used to be there. It was
infernally absurd that I should have got so sentimental, but that wasn't
the worst of it. For I met Tony and he made me come round to a dinner,
and there I found people I didn't know from Adam drinking the old toasts
we started. Gad, they had them all. 'Las Palmas,' 'The Old Guard,'
'The Wandering Scot,' and all the others. It made me feel as low as an
owl, and when I got back to the club and saw poor old John's photograph
on the wall, I tell you I went to bed in the most wretched melancholy.
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