Cressage

When Walter Garnet, in his rooms at Stafford College, Oxford,
learned from the shouting of an uproarious friend in the quad that
he had got his First in Greats, he threw down the book he had been
reading, and leaned out of the window, to be greeted by a torrent
of congratulation to which he replied, "Thanks very much!"

"I never saw such an old slug!" said his breathless friend.
"Aren't you going to DO anything?"

"Come up and see!" said Garnet.

Tommy Hobday clattered up the narrow wooden stairs. The room, a
pleasant little panelled place, was half dismantled. On the table
was a pile of books and a smaller pile of notebooks and papers.

"Hullo," said Tommy, "I didn't know you were going to clear out so
quick."

"Yes, I am off to-morrow. I shall just come back to take my
degree."

"I don't believe you are a bit pleased!"

"Yes, I am--very much. At least I should have been furious if I
hadn't got my First."

"Well, you are the coolest fish! I should have been all over the
place by now, if I had been you. But what are we going to do?"

"Well, I'll give you a dinner somewhere to-night if you will order
it and get the men."

"Won't I just! Do you run to champagne?" asked Tommy.

"Yes, anything you like."

"Anyone in particular?"

"Oh, Bim and Menzies and any of the old lot, not more than eight
beside ourselves."

The irrepressible Tommy looked at him. "What's the matter with
you, Walter? You seem to have begun practising to be a Don
already. Whence this dejected mien?" and Hobday burst into a few
bars of an opera-bouffe.

"Why, 'at such a time as this,' as the Dean said in his sermon on
Sunday, 'the mind naturally reverts to its spiritual horizon. What
brave designs, what meagre fulfilment!'" and Walter rolled his
eyes, and extended a sidelong forefinger at Tommy.

"Come, that's a little better. Now I'll go and rout the guys out.
Any preference as to place?"