Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/56

36 and Latin writers, or, still worse, with Euclid and mixed mathematics. On the present occasion, at little Mr. Bouncer's breakfast, they were able to partake of the good things provided for the occasion, and to linger over them with pleasurable zest.

The table presented the usual medley of eatables and drinkables, in which coffee and beer-cup, chickens and claret-cup, moselle and pigeon-pie, mutton cutlets and sardines, curaçoa and potted char, beef-steaks and grilled fish, cocoa and caviar, devilled kidneys and omelettes, anchovy toast and sangaree, found a place among various other refreshments, both heavy and light, that were fast disappearing before the attacks of the bevy of hungry undergraduates. Through the open windows was caught a glimpse of the City of Colleges, bathed in the radiant streams of summer sunshine, every turreted tower and soaring spire standing out clear and sharp against the blue sky. The grand avenue of limes for which Brazenface is celebrated, was filled with a murmur of bees. Below was the smoothly-shaven turf in the centre of the Quad, with the Hall on the one side, the Chapel on the other, and on either hand the rows of mullioned, heavy-headed windows, at some of which the unaccustomed sight was seen of young girls peering into the court below—an unusual but pretty look-out at Brazenface. For it had been the Commemoration week, when the feminine element puts in a strong appearance in Oxford, and for a few days in the year enlivens the old grey colleges with pretty pictures of beauty and fashion, and brightens up the rooms of happy undergraduates, of learned tutors, of stately dons, and miserable Fellows, whose tantalising lot it is to look and admire, but not to marry, under pain of resigning their