Looking back on it all, he was mystified by the barrenness of his speech; he felt that he could say 'an awful lot of fetching things' if he had but the chance again, and the thought that he must go back to Littlehampton on the morrow, and to Oxford on the twelfth--'to that beastly exam,' too--without the faintest chance of first seeing her again, caused darkness to settle on his spirit even more quickly than on the evening.

He should write to her, however, and she had promised to answer.

Perhaps, too, she would come up to Oxford to see her brother.

That thought was like the first star, which came out as he rode into Padwick's livery stables in the purlieus of Sloane Square.
He got off and stretched himself luxuriously, for he had ridden some twenty-five good miles.

The Dartie within him made him chaffer for five minutes with young Padwick concerning the favourite for the Cambridgeshire; then with the words, "Put the gee down to my account," he walked away, a little wide at the knees, and flipping his boots with his knotty little cane.