All day he was to be seen, for once, in the centre of an admiring host; by four o’clock he was as dizzy as a sick bee on a surfeit of praise, and his sense of participation in the events about him was noticeably diminished. One of these events was that already a crowd some seventy strong, and including the Vice-Chancellor and his wife, the town clerk and the manager of the local dancehall, Mr Schenk and Mr Butterfield, were packed in a large lecture room on hard wooden benches; and Willoughby was half an hour overdue. ‘I hope he really is coming,’ said Butterfield, who, since Willoughby was speaking for the Poetry Weekend he had arranged with Mr Schenk, had a vested interest in the occasion, and was frightened of what Bates was going to pull out of the bag next. ‘Someone has gone down to the station to meet him?’ asked Professor de Thule, of History, sneaking out of his own department. ‘Well,’ said Bates, bright as a pin.
