"Don't you go, Edward," whispered Julia:
"why should you be at Mr. Hardie's beck and
call? I never heard of such a thing. That youth
will make me hate him."

"Oh, I think I had better just go and see what
it is about," replied Edward: "I shall be back
directly." And on this understanding he went
off with the men.

Half an hour passed; an hour: two hours;
and he did not return. Mrs. Dodd and Julia sat
wondering what had become of him, and were
looking all around, and getting uneasy; when at
last they did hear something about him, but
indirectly, and from an unexpected quarter. A tall
young man in a Jersey and flannel trousers, and a
little straw hat, with a purple rosette, came away
from the bustle to the more secluded part where
they sat, and made eagerly for the Thames as if he
was a duck, and going in. But at the brink he
flung himself into a sitting posture, and dipped
his white handkerchief into the stream, then tied
it viciously round his brow, doubled himself up
with his head in his hands, and rocked himself like
an old woman—minus the patience, of course.

Mrs. Dodd and Julia, sitting but a few paces
behind him, interchanged a look of intelligence.
The young gentleman was a stranger: but they
had recognised a faithful old acquaintance at the
bottom of his pantomime. They discovered, too,
that the afflicted one was a personage: for he had
not sat there long when quite a little band of
men came after him. Observing his semicircularity
and general condition, they hesitated a
moment: and then one of them remonstrated
eagerly. "For Heaven's sake come back to the
boat! there is a crowd of all the colleges come
round us; and they all say Oxford is being sold;
we had a chance for the four-oared race, and you
are throwing it away."

"What do I care what they all say?" was the
answer, delivered with a kind of plaintive snarl.

But we care.

"Care then! I pity you." And he turned his
back fiercely on them; and then groaned by way
of half apology. Another tried him, "Come give
us a civil answer, please."

"People that intrude upon a man's privacy,
racked with pain, have no right to demand
civility," replied the sufferer more gently, but
sullenly enough.

"Do you call this privacy?"

"It was, a minute ago. Do you think I left
the boat, and came here, among the natives, for
company? and noise? With my head splitting."

Here Julia gave Mrs. Dodd a soft pinch, to
which Mrs. Dodd replied by a smile. And so they
settled who this petulant young invalid must be.

"There, it is no use," observed one, sotto voce,
"the bloke really has awful headaches, like a
girl, and then he always shuts up this way. You
will only rile him, and get the rough side of his
tongue."

Here, then, the conference drew towards a
close. But a Wadham man, who was one of the
ambassadors, interposed. "Stop a minute,"
said he. "Mr. Hardie, I have not the honour to be
acquainted with you, and I am not here to annoy
you, nor to be affronted by you. But the university
has a stake in this race, and the university
expostulates through us; through me if you like."

"Who have I the honour," inquired Hardie,
assuming politeness sudden and vast.

"Badham, of Wadham."

"Badham o' Wadham? Hear that, ye tuneful
nine! Well Badham o' Wadham, you are no
acquaintance of mine; so you may possibly not
be a fool. Let us assume by way of hypothesis
that you are a man of sense, a man of reason as
well as of rhyme. Then follow my logic.

"Hardie of Exeter is a good man in a boat
when he has not got a headache.

"When he has got a headache, Hardie of Exeter
is not worth a straw in a boat.

"Hardie of Exeter has a headache now.

"Ergo, the university would put the said
Hardie into a race, headache and all, and reduce
defeat to a certainty.

"And, ergo, on the same premises, I, not being
an egotist, nor an ass, have taken Hardie of Exeter
and his headache out of the boat, as I should
have done any other cripple.

"Secondly, I have put the best man on the
river into this cripple's place.

"Total, I have given the university the benefit
of my brains; and the university, not having
brains enough to see what it gains by the
exchange, turns again and rends me, like an animal
frequently mentioned in Scripture; but, nota
bene, never once with approbation."

And the afflicted Rhetorician attempted a
diabolical grin, but failed signally; and groaned
instead.

"Is this your answer to the university, sir?"

At this query, delivered in a somewhat threatening
tone, the invalid sat up all in a moment, like a
poked lion.

"Oh, if Badham o' Wadham thinks to crush
me auctoritate suâ et totius universitatis,
Badham o' Wadham may just tell the whole
university to go and be d——d, from the
Chancellor down to the junior cook at Skimmery Hall,
with my compliments."

"Ill conditioned brute!" muttered Badham of
Wadham. "Serve you right if the university
were to chuck you into the Thames." And with
this comment they left him to his ill temper.
One remained; sat quietly down a little way
off, struck a sweetly aromatic lucifer, and blew a
noisome cloud; but the only one which betokens
calm.

As for Hardie, he held his aching head over
his knees, absorbed in pain, and quite unconscious
that sacred pity was poisoning the air beside
him, and two pair of dovelike eyes resting on
him with womanly concern.

Mrs. Dodd and Julia had heard the greatest
part of this colloquy. They had terribly quick
ears; and nothing better to do with them just
then. Indeed, their interest was excited.

Julia went so far as to put her salts into Mrs.