How can any boy fail to feel an ecstasy of pleasure on first finding
himself in rooms which he knows for the next few years are to be his
castle? Here he will not be compelled to turn out of the most
comfortable place as soon as he has ensconced himself in it because papa
or mamma happens to come into the room, and he should give it up to them.
The most cosy chair here is for himself, there is no one even to share
the room with him, or to interfere with his doing as he likes in
it--smoking included. Why, if such a room looked out both back and front
on to a blank dead wall it would still be a paradise, how much more then
when the view is of some quiet grassy court or cloister or garden, as
from the windows of the greater number of rooms at Oxford and Cambridge.
Theobald, as an old fellow and tutor of Emmanuel--at which college he had
entered Ernest--was able to obtain from the present tutor a certain
preference in the choice of rooms; Ernest's, therefore, were very
pleasant ones, looking out upon the grassy court that is bounded by the
Fellows' gardens.
Theobald accompanied him to Cambridge, and was at his best while doing
so. He liked the jaunt, and even he was not without a certain feeling of
pride in having a full-blown son at the University.
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