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Mrs. Dodd remarked that the language was sadly figurative; but she hoped Edward might be successful in spite of his correspondent's style.

Julia said she did not dare hope it. “The race is not always to the slowest and the dearest.” This was in allusion to yesterday's “foul.”

The skiffs started down at the island, and, as they were longer coming up than the eight oars, she was in a fever for nearly ten minutes. At last, near the opposite bank, up came the two leading skiffs struggling, both men visibly exhausted—Silcock ahead, but his rudder overlapped by Hardie's bow; each in his own water.

“We are third,” sighed Julia, and turned her head away from the river sorrowfully. But only for a moment, for she felt Mrs. Dodd start and press her arm; and lo! Edward's skiff was shooting swiftly across from their side of the river. He was pulling just within himself, in beautiful form, and with far more elasticity than the other two had got left. As he passed his mother and sister, his eyes seemed to strike fire, and he laid out all his powers, and went at the leading skiffs hand over head. There was a yell of astonishment and delight from both sides of the Thames. He passed Hardie, who upon that relaxed his speed. In thirty seconds more he was even with Silcock. Then came a keen struggle: but the new comer was “the horse that could stay:” he drew steadily ahead, and the stern of his boat was in a line with Silcock's person when the gun fired; and a fearful roar from the bridge, the river, and the banks, announced that the favourite university had picked up the sculls in the person of Dodd of Exeter.

In due course he brought the little silver sculls, and pinned them on his mother.

While she and Julia were telling him how proud they were, and how happy they should be, but for their fears that he would hurt himself, beating gentlemen ever so much older than himself, came two Exeter men with wild looks hunting for him.

“Oh, Dodd! Hardie wants you directly.”

“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 semi-circularity 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 sua 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. Dodd's hand with a little earnest look. But Mrs. Dodd did not act upon the hint. She had learned who the young man was: had his very name been strange to her, she would have been more at her ease with him. Moreover, his rudeness to the other men repelled her a little. Above all, he had uttered a monosyllable and a stinger: a thorn of speech not in her vocabulary, nor even in society's. Those might be his manners, even when not aching. Still, it seems, a feather would have turned the scale in his favour, for she whispered, “I have a great mind; if I could but catch his eye.”

While feminine pity and social reserve were holding the balance so nicely, and nonsensically, about half a split straw, one of the racing four-oars went down close under the Berkshire bank. “London!” observed Hardie's adherent.

“What, are you there, old fellow?” murmured Hardie, in a faint voice. “Now, that is like a friend, a real friend, to sit by me, and not make a row. Thank you! thank you!”

Presently the Cambridge four-oar passed: it was speedily followed by the Oxford; the last came down in mid-stream, and Hardie eyed it keenly as it passed. “There,” he cried, “was I wrong? There is a swing for you; there is a stroke. I did not know what a treasure I had got sitting behind me.”

The ladies looked, and lo! the lauded Stroke of the four-oar was their Edward.

“Sing out and tell him it is not like the sculls. We must fight for the lead at starting, and hold it with his eyelids when he has got it.”

The adherent bawled this at Edward, and Edward's reply came ringing back in a clear, cheerful voice, “We mean to try all we know.”

“What is the odds?” inquired the invalid faintly.

“Even on London; two to one against Cambridge; three to one against us.”

“Take all my tin and lay it on,” sighed the sufferer.

“Fork it out, then. Hallo! eighteen pounds? Fancy having eighteen pounds at the end of term. I'll get the odds up at the bridge directly. Here's a lady offering you her smelling-bottle.”

Hardie rose and turned round, and sure enough there were two ladies seated in their carriage at some distance, one of whom was holding him out three pretty little things enough, a little smile, a little blush, and a little cut-glass bottle with a gold cork. The last panegyric on Edward had turned the scale.

Hardie went slowly up to the side of the carriage, and took off his hat to them with a half-bewildered air. Now that he was so near, his face showed very pale; the more so that his neck was a good deal tanned; his eyelids were rather swollen, and his young eyes troubled and almost filmy with the pain. The ladies saw, and their gentle bosoms were touched: they had heard of him as a victorious young Apollo trampling on all difficulties of mind and body; and they saw him wan, and worn, with feminine suffering: the contrast made him doubly interesting.

Arrived at the side of the carriage, he almost started at Julia's beauty. It was sun-like, and so were her two lovely earnest eyes, beaming soft pity on him with an eloquence he had never seen in human eyes before; for Julia's were mirrors of herself; they did nothing by halves.

He looked at her and her mother, and blushed, and stood irresolute, awaiting their commands. This sudden contrast to his petulance with his own sex paved the way. “You have a sad headache, sir,” said Mrs. Dodd; “oblige me by trying my salts.”

He thanked her in a low voice.

“And, mamma,” inquired Julia, “ought he to sit in the sun?”

“Certainly not. You had better sit there, sir, and profit by our shade and our parasols.”

“Yes, mamma, but you know the real place where he ought to be is Bed.”

“Oh, pray don't say that,” implored the patient.

But Julia continued, with unabated severity, “And that is where he would go this minute, if I was his mamma.”

“Instead of his junior, and a stranger,” said Mrs. Dodd, somewhat coldly, dwelling with a very slight monitory emphasis on the “stranger.”

Julia said nothing, but drew in perceptibly, and was dead silent ever after.

“Oh, madam!” said Hardie eagerly, “I do not dispute her authority, nor yours. You have a right to send me where you please, after your kindness in noticing my infernal head, and doing me the honour to speak to me, and lending me this. But if I go to bed, my head will be my master. Besides, I shall throw away what little chance I have of making your acquaintance; and the race just coming off!”

“We will not usurp authority, sir,” said Mrs. Dodd quietly; “but we know what a severe headache is, and should be glad to see you sit still in the shade, and excite yourself as little as possible.”

“Yes, madam,” said the youth humbly, and sat down like a lamb. He glanced now and then at the island, and now and then peered up at the radiant young mute beside him.

The silence continued till it was broken by—a fish out of water. An undergraduate in spectacles came mooning along, all out of his element. It was Mr. Kennet, who used to rise at four every morning to his Plato, and walk up Shotover Hill every afternoon, wet or dry, to cool his eyes for his evening work. With what view he deviated to Henley has not yet been ascertained. He was blind as a bat, and did not care a button about any earthly boat-race, except the one in the AEneid, even if he could have seen one. However, nearly all the men of his college went to Henley, and perhaps some branch, hitherto unexplored, of animal magnetism drew him after. At any rate, there was his body; and his mind at Oxford and Athens, and other venerable but irrelevant cities. He brightened at sight of his doge, and asked him warmly if he had heard the news.

“No: what? Nothing wrong, I hope?”

“Why, two of our men are ploughed; that is all,” said Kennet, affecting with withering irony to undervalue his intelligence.

“Confound it, Kennet, how you frightened me! I was afraid there was some screw loose with the crew.”

At this very instant, the smoke of the pistol was seen to puff out from the island, and Hardie rose to his feet. “They are off!” cried he to the ladies, and after first putting his palms together with a hypocritical look of apology, he laid one hand on an old barge that was drawn up ashore, and sprang like a mountain goat on to the bow, lighting on the very gunwale. The position was not tenable an instant, but he extended one foot very nimbly and boldly, and planted it on the other gunwale; and there he was in a moment, headache and all, in an attitude as large and inspired as the boldest gesture antiquity has committed to marble—he had even the advantage in stature over most of the sculptured forms of Greece. But a double opera-glass at his eye “spoiled the lot,” as Mr. Punch says.

I am not to repeat the particulars of a distant race coming nearer and nearer. The main features are always the same; only this time it was more exciting to our fair friends, on account of Edward's high stake in it. And then their grateful though refractory patient, an authority in their eyes, indeed all but a river-god, stood poised in air, and in excited whispers interpreted each distant and unintelligible feature down to them:

“Cambridge was off quickest.”

“But not much.”

“Anybody's race at present, madam.”

“If this lasts long we may win. None of them can stay like us.”

“Come, the favourite is not so very dangerous.”

“Cambridge looks best.”

“I wouldn't change with either, so far.”

“Now, in forty seconds more, I shall be able to pick out the winner.”

Julia went up this ladder of thrills to a high state of excitement; and, indeed, they were all so tuned to racing pitch, that some metal nerve or other seemed to jar inside all three, when the piercing, grating voice of Kennet broke in suddenly with—

“How do you construe [Greek text]?”

The wretch had burrowed in the intellectual ruins of Greece the moment the pistol went off, and college chat ceased. Hardie raised his opera-glass, and his first impulse was to brain the judicious Kennet, gazing up to him for an answer, with spectacles goggling like supernatural eyes of dead sophists in the sun.

“How do you construe 'Hoc age''? you incongruous dog. Hold your tongue, and mind the race.”

“There, I thought so. Where's your three to one, now? The Cockneys are out of this event, any way. Go on, Universities, and order their suppers!”

“But which is first, sir?” asked Julia imploringly. “Oh, which is first of all?”

“Neither. Never mind; it looks well. London is pumped; and if Cambridge can't lead him before this turn in the river, the race will be ours. Now, look out! By Jove, we are ahead!”

The leading boats came on, Oxford pulling a long, lofty, sturdy stroke, that seemed as if it never could compete with the quick action of its competitor. Yet it was undeniably ahead, and gaining at every swing.

Young Hardie writhed on his perch. He screeched at them across the Thames, “Well pulled, Stroke! Well pulled all! Splendidly pulled, Dodd! You are walking away from them altogether. Hurrah, Oxford for ever, hurrah!” The gun went off over the heads of the Oxford crew in advance, and even Mrs. Dodd and Julia could see the race was theirs.

“We have won at last,” cried Julia, all on fire, “and fairly; only think of that!”

Hardie turned round, grateful to beauty for siding with his university. “Yes, and the fools may thank me; or rather my man, Dodd. Dodd for ever! Hurrah!”

At this climax even Mrs. Dodd took a gentle share in the youthful enthusiasm that was boiling around her, and her soft eyes sparkled, and she returned the fervid pressure of her daughter's hand; and both their faces were flushed with gratified pride and affection.

“Dodd!” broke in “the incongruous dog,” with a voice just like a saw's. “Dodd? Ah, that's the man who is just ploughed for smalls.”

Ice has its thunderbolts.