Hard Cash | Page 6

good-for- nothing thing."
The pair found a little room hard by, paved with china, crockery, glass,
baths, kettles, &c.
"There, sir. Look them in the face; and us, if you can."
"Well, you know, I had no idea you had been and bought a cart-load of
things for Oxford." His eye brightened; he whipped out a two-foot rule,
and began to calculate the cubic contents. "I'll turn to and make the
cases, Ju."
The ladies had their way; the cases were made and despatched; and one
morning the Bus came for Edward, and stopped at the gate of Albion
Villa. At this sight mother and daughter both turned their heads quickly

away by one independent impulse, and set a bad example. Apparently
neither of them had calculated on this paltry little detail; they were
game for theoretical departures; to impalpable universities: and "an
air-drawn Bus, a Bus of the mind," would not have dejected for a
moment their lofty Spartan souls on glory bent; safe glory. But here
was a Bus of wood, and Edward going bodily away inside it. The
victim kissed them, threw up his portmanteau and bag, and departed
serene as Italian skies; the victors watched the pitiless Bus quite out of
sight; then went up to his bedroom, all disordered by packing, and, on
the very face of it, vacant; and sat down on his little bed intertwining
and weeping.
Edward was received at Exeter College, as young gentlemen are
received at college; and nowhere else, I hope, for the credit of
Christendom. They showed him a hole in the roof, and called it an
"Attic;" grim pleasantry! being a puncture in the modern Athens. They
inserted him; told him what hour at the top of the morning he must be
in chapel; and left him to find out his other ills. His cases were
welcomed like Christians, by the whole staircase. These undergraduates
abused one another's crockery as their own: the joint stock of
breakables had just dwindled very low, and Mrs. Dodd's bountiful
contribution was a godsend.
The new comer soon found that his views of a learned university had
been narrow. Out of place in it? why, he could not have taken his wares
to a better market; the modern Athens, like the ancient, cultivates
muscle as well as mind. The captain of the university eleven saw a
cricket-ball thrown all across the ground; he instantly sent a
professional bowler to find out who that was; through the same
ambassador the thrower was invited to play on club days; and proving
himself an infallible catch and long-stop, a mighty thrower, a swift
runner, and a steady, though not very brilliant bat, he was, after one or
two repulses, actually adopted into the university eleven. He
communicated this ray of glory by letter to his mother and sister with
genuine delight, coldly and clumsily expressed; they replied with
feigned and fluent rapture. Advancing steadily in that line of academic
study towards which his genius lay, he won a hurdle race, and sent
home a little silver hurdle; and soon after brought a pewter pot, with a
Latin inscription recording the victory at "Fives" of Edward Dodd: but

not too arrogantly; for in the centre of the pot was this device, "The
Lord Is My Illumination." The Curate of Sandford, who pulled number
six in the Exeter boat, left Sandford for Witney: on this he felt he could
no longer do his college justice by water, and his parish by land, nor
escape the charge of pluralism, preaching at Witney and rowing at
Oxford. He fluctuated, sighed, kept his Witney, and laid down his oar.
Then Edward was solemnly weighed in his jersey and flannel trousers,
and proving only eleven stone eight, whereas he had been ungenerously
suspected of twelve stone,* was elected to the vacant oar by
acclamation. He was a picture in a boat; and, "Oh!!! well pulled, six!!"
was a hearty ejaculation constantly hurled at him from the bank by
many men of other colleges, and even by the more genial among the
cads, as the Exeter glided at ease down the river, or shot up it in a race.
*There was at this time a prejudice against weight, which has yielded
to experience
He was now as much talked of in the university as any man of his
college, except one. Singularly enough that one was his townsman; but
no friend of his; he was much Edward's senior in standing, though not
in age; and this is a barrier the junior must not step over--without direct
encouragement--at Oxford. Moreover, the college was a large one, and
some of "the sets" very exclusive: young Hardie was Doge of a
studious clique; and careful to make it understood that he was a reading
man who