‘The Master has sent him down.’ ‘Good Lord! Rusticated him, do you mean?’ ‘Nothing of the sort. Poor old Paddy is sacked for keeps.’ ‘Whatever for?’ ‘Atrocious immoralities. He was found in the chaplain’s bedroom in the embraces of an enormous Negress. Paddy thought it was a fine and private place for embracing.’ ‘But that’s monstrous!’ A second young man had joined in, and it might have been possible to suppose that his voice was choked with emotion. This was occasioned, however, merely by his not having paused to finish the mastication of a slab of anchovy toast. ‘What’s wrong with a Negress – even an enormous one? It’s ghastly racial prejudice. The Master must be denounced. There must be demonstrations and things. They have them regularly in all universities that are in the slightest degree with it. The trouble about Oxford is, you know, that it just isn’t committed.’ ‘But can we be sure’ – a third and serious youth asked – ‘that the Master wouldn’t have acted in the same way if Paddy’s amour had been with an equally enormous blonde Swede?
