draught. Between them was a table covered with the ordinary
appointments for a breakfast, and the extra-ordinary ones of beer-cup
and soda-water. Two Skye terriers, hearing a strange footstep,
immediately barked out a challenge of "Who goes there?" and made Mr.
Larkyns aware that an intruder was at hand.

Slightly turning his head, he dimly saw through the smoke a
spectacled figure taking off his hat, and holding out an envelope,
and without looking further, he said, "It's no use coming here, young
man, and stealing a march in this way! I don't owe ~you~ any thing;
and if I did, it is not convenient to pay it. I told Spavin not to
send me any more of his confounded reminders; so go back and tell him
that he'll find it all right in the long-run, and that I'm really
going to read this term, and shall stump the examiners at last. And
now, my friend, you'd better make yourself scarce and vanish! You
know where the door lies!"

Our hero was so confounded at this unusual manner of receiving a
friend, that he was some little time before he could gasp out, "Why,
Charles Larkyns - don't you remember me? Verdant Green!"

Mr. Larkyns, astonished in his turn, jumped up directly, and came to
him with outstretched hands. "'Pon my word,


[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 63]

old fellow," he said, "I really beg you ten thousand pardons for not
recognizing you; but you are so altered - allow me to add, improved, -
since I last saw you; you were not a bashaw of two tails, then, you