Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/311

 together on that day; and now Willoughby and Collins were gone, I was positively the only man left up—the only man left in College on Christmas-day! "Ha! ha!" Desolation had marked me for her own.

Our Dining-Hall at Brazenface is, as every one knows, one of the largest in Oxford, and the feeble light from the two solitary lamps only made it appear the more vast and solitary. When I peered into its farthest depths, and thought of the brilliancy, and crowd, and laughter, and loud hum of conversation, that, during the Term, reigned there at that time, I cut into the roast beef before me with a savage energy. At least, I had the proper Christmas dinner! They gave me that! But I think it only made me worse: if I had had other dishes, I might possibly have forgotten the day, and not felt so wretched. The cook, however, in his mistaken kindness, decorated the plum-pudding with a large piece of holly; and there was no forgetting that it was Christmas. My scout waited upon me: to do so, he had been obliged to leave a party of his fellow-servants, and was sulky, accordingly. He told me of this, and asked my permission to rejoin them, as soon as he had put my tea-things ready against I wanted them. So even he was going to a merry party, and would be in company, and enjoy himself; whilst I"Ha! ha!"

The very eyes of the Founders and Benefactors seemed to be fixed upon me, from their canvas, as I ate my solitary dinner. It was soon over: it was not at all the sort of thing I wished to linger upon: and I walked out of Hall, and through the Second Quad. to the cloisters of our Chapel. It was the most lonely place I could find, and it harmonised with my thoughts and condition.