Sometimes I think O'Rane with his invincible sociability 'made' Oxford for a good many people. His rooms--in Loring's phrase--were like a gathering of the Aborigines Protection Society, and he was always pressing us to meet his new discoveries. "D'you know Blackwell?" he would ask. "Lives in Meadows, rather a clever fellow. He's a bit shy and not much to look at, but there's ... there's ... there's good stuff in him."
Loring invariably declined such invitations, but he picked up the formula and parodied it.
"Raney!" he would call from the window-seat of the digs. "Come over here, little man. There's a fellow down here I want you to meet. He's not much to look at, but there's ... there's good stuff in him. That's the merchant, accumulating cigarette ends out of the gutter. He's a bit elderly, and he's come down in the world rather, but in a properly organized Democratic Brotherhood.... You undersized little beast, you've nearly killed my best Siamese! Come here, Christabel, and don't pay any attention to the off-scourings of the Irish bogs. One of these days, Kitty, we'll save up our pennies and buy a dwarf wild-ass and keep her in a cage and call her Raney." And at that, of course, O'Rane would begin the process of what he called "taking the lid off hell."
_Où sont les neiges d'antan?_ Within six weeks we were scattered, and in twice six years I never recaptured that "first fine careless rapture" of living hourly in company with Loring and O'Rane, the two men whom I most loved in the world. The date of the final schools drew on apace, and when they were past we underwent limpness and reaction for a day. Only one day, for as we sat down to dinner Loring said with a forced, uneasy smile that only half-hid his emotion, "George, d'you appreciate we've only got six days more?"
"Six days. H'm. I say, why shouldn't we stay up another year and read Law or something?"
"All our year's going down and the digs. are taken. 'Sides, it'll be just as bad in a year's time."
We faced our fate, only determining to alleviate it by making good use of the last moments. The House was giving a ball and, as I was one of the stewards, I can say that we treated ourselves generously in the allotment of tickets. Lady Loring was to chaperon our party, and by a triumph of organization we found beds for all at '93D.' Between Schools and Commem. there were a thousand things to do, from the arrangement of valedictory dinners to the return of borrowed volumes and the sale of innumerable text-books. By our last Sunday all was clear, and we invited O'Rane to punt us as far up the Cher as he could get between ten and one.