It is the easiest thing in the world to start clubs if all you want to get out of them is a remarkable tie and hatband, and I knew a man--by sight--who started three clubs in two years. The first he called "The Roysterers," and they were supposed to dine twice a term in waistcoats decorated with R.D.C. buttons; the second he named "The Oddfish," a club which was intended to be eccentric, and from the extraordinary colours they adopted I should think they were aptly named. Their chief function was drinking, and although I never went to any of their carousals I believe they discharged it thoroughly. The third club which this energetic man founded was not given up to eating and drinking, but devoted itself to the discussion of moral and artistic subjects. They called themselves "The Bumble-Bees," though I never could understand the reason why they chose such a name, unless it was, as Murray suggested, that after they had touched a thing there was no sweetness left in it. I should not like to say how many more clubs this man would have started had he been given the opportunity, but he was sent down at the end of his second year, and I have met him since in Florence wearing a Bumble-Bee tie and Oddfish ribbon round his straw-hat. I regret to say that he belonged to St. Cuthbert's, and he was really a nuisance, because there was so strong a feeling against these miscellaneous colours during my first summer term that nearly all the men who could do anything respectably wore black bands on their straw-hats, and the effect was most dismal.
Dennison heard that my sister was coming up for Eights' week, and he told me calmly that he should like to meet her. I may have imagined that he considered this an act of condescension on his part, for I cannot pretend that I was always fair to him. I distrusted him so thoroughly that I never believed a word he said, and the only possible way for peace between us was for each of us to leave the other alone. But this way did not suit him, for I suppose that I knew too many men to be left out entirely from his consideration, and it seems to me that it is more annoying for a man to be friendly when you want to have nothing to do with him, than it is for anybody to take no notice of you when you would be glad to be his friend. I did not, however, mean to let Nina meet Dennison, for I never knew whom she might like or dislike, and it would have been a most horrible complication if she had fallen a victim to Dennison's smile. So I told him that Nina would not be in Oxford for more than two or three days, and that I did not know her plans, which was true enough as far as it went, and must have been enough for him to understand what I meant.