Page:Cuthbert Bede--Verdant Green married and done for.djvu/119

Rh When the Vice-Chancellor has spoken these remarkable words which, after three years of university reading and expense, grant so much that has not been asked or wished for, the newly-made Bachelors rush out of the Convocation House in wild confusion, and stand on one side to allow the Vice-Chancellarian procession to pass. Then, on emerging from the Pig-market, they hear St. Mary's bells, which sound to them sweeter than ever.



Mrs. Verdant Green is especially delighted with her husband's voluminous bachelor's gown and white-furred hood (articles which Mr. Robert Filcher, when helping to put them on his master in the ante-chamber, had declared to be "the most becomingest things as was ever wore on a gentleman's shoulders"), and forthwith carries him off to be photographed while the gloss of his new glory is yet upon him. Of course, Mr. Verdant Green and all the new Bachelors are most profusely "capped;" and, of course, all this servile homage—although appreciated at its full worth, and repaid by shillings and quarts of buttery beer—of course it is most grateful to the feelings, and is as delightfully intoxicating to the imagination as any incense of flattery can be.

What a pride does Mr. Verdant Green feel as he takes his bride through the streets of his beautiful Oxford! how complacently he conducts her to lunch at the confectioner's who had supplied their wedding-cake! how he escorts her (under the