Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/266

246 takes it into his head to pay a visit to this compartment! 'The thought, it is madness, deceiver, to thee!' as the song says. I will sell my life as dearly as possible." Mr. Percival Wylde, therefore, silently, but firmly, clasped the handle of the door, and pulled it towards him; and, with a beating heart, listened to the gaspings, puffings, and mental ejaculations with which the Old Boy was amusing himself on the other side.

In this way the father and son reached Oxford, side by side, and yet, to all intents and purposes, far distant from each other. But though he had reached Oxford in safety, yet the æger man was not yet out of danger; even Doctor Love would not have pronounced him free from a relapse. The sick man had still to get into his College, and that, before the Old Boy could arrive there.

Now, the railway traveller may chance to remember, that the "Down" side of the Oxford Station is on the further side from the city; and that, on alighting on the "Down" platform, to proceed to the city, he has to pass over a bridge that spans the line—by which proceeding a greater amount of ground has to be traversed than if he had set out to the city from the "Up" platform. This problem of mensuration was at once apparent to Mr. Percival Wylde, and also the benefit that he might derive from its immediate solution. He had no sooner, therefore, seen the Old Boy clear out of compartment No. 1, than, darting from compartment No. 2, with his coat collar turned well up over his face, he ran across the line, jumped on to the "Up" platform, and, in defiance of policemen and railway regulations, vaulted over the iron-work fencing, that—in a manner believed to be peculiar to the Oxford station—performs the superfluous duty of an useless barricade against nothing, and