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of the college, had taken it upon himself to utter a loud and scornful exclamation upon each mispronunciation in that grotesque catalogue of names – an effect the more pleasing to the assembled undergraduates in that Mummery’s reactions appeared to issue involuntarily from deep sleep.
    Winter was glad to see Mummery being directed to the little table. It was one of the horrors of Dr Groper’s system that one never knew from evening to evening with whom one must consort. The suspicion was current that old Puxton, the mathematical tutor who had charge of the arrangements, had long since lost his grip of the necessary calculations and resorted to mere bluff; on one occasion when the Professor of Eschatology had been required to sit at the little table three nights running there had been quite a scene. Dons are in general a mildly gregarious sort of men, and nobody except Mummery relished Dr Groper’s periodic seclusion. Mummery cheated. The little table, being a little table, was easily movable, and it was Mummery’s habit to edge it within earshot of the middle-sized table. He was thus able, while seemingly in a profound abstraction, to practise that trick of significant ejaculation which had been employing against Winter in chapel.
    Winter, meditating in increasing irritation the riddle of the Spider’s prescience, found himself directed to the middle-sized table along with the Master, Dr Bussenschutt. A moment later they were joined by Benton, the senior tutor from whom Timmy’s exeat would have to be obtained. No arrangement, Winter reflected, could have been more dismal. Benton believed that Bussenschutt drank. Bussenschutt knew this. Bussenschutt affected to believe that Benton had an out-of-the-way vulgar accent, and he was in the habit of consulting undergraduates from remote parts of the country in an effort to identify it. This Benton knew. Bussenschutt had once overheard Benton say that Winter thought that Bussenschutt was the very type of the scholar who has never mastered his Latin grammar; and this had confirmed Bussenschutt in his conviction that Winter was, intellectually at the least, dishonest. Winter and Benton disliked each other, as a matter of mere instinct. And on mere instinct they both disliked Mummery, whose table was now levitating stealthily nearer. Mummery, in a moment of some little unrestraint, had once apostrophized Bussenschutt as a hoary-headed and toothless baboon and Bussenschutt, declaring that nothing could be more unacademic that such language, had preached a powerful sermon against Mummery on the text The name of the wicked shall rot . It was the business of all four men to work closely together on the production of a learned journal called Comity .
    Bussenschutt sat down and eyed his companions with the greatest geniality. Then, preserving the same expression he directed his glance to the decanter. ‘Ah, the Smith Woodhouse late-bottled? A wine invariably brilliant on the table.’ He poured out a glass. ‘And the bouquet immense.’
    ‘I deprecate’, said Mummery loudly, and appearing to address Dr Groper over the fireplace, ‘aroma in ports.’
    Benton shifted his chair so as to have his back squarely to the little table. ‘I wish’, he said, ‘we might see the Fonseca ’96.’ Benton was an anxious and nervous person, looking much before and after; his conversation was frequently despondingly optative. ‘I do wish we might have the ’96.’
    Bussenschutt cracked a walnut. ‘The Fonseca? We are to have it up for Founder’s Day at the end of the month. By the way, I have had a letter from Jasper Shoon.’
    ‘From Shoon, the armaments man?’ said Winter. Winter’s mind sometimes strayed to public issues.
    ‘From Shoon, the collector?’ said Benton. Benton always maintained the attitude of a pure scholar.
    ‘Indeed, yes – Jasper Shoon. Winter, have I not heard you maintain that port is not a right wine?’
    ‘The intellectual pleasure of drinking wine’, said