only to carry a bow and arrows for the sake of honest recreation;+ - if Mr. Verdant Green had known that he had covenanted to do this, he would, perhaps, have felt some scruples in taking the oaths of matriculation. But this by the way. Now that Mr. Green had seen all that he wished to see, nothing remained for him but to discharge his hotel bill. It was accordingly called for, and produced by the waiter, whose face - by a visitation of that complaint against which vaccination is usually considered a safeguard - had been reduced to a --- * See the Oxford Statutes, tit. xiv, "De vestitu et habitu scholastico." + Ditto, tit. xv, "De moribus conformandis." -=- [48 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN] state resembling the interior half of a sliced muffin. To judge from the expression of Mr. Green's features as he regarded the document that had been put into his hand, it is probable that he had not been much accustomed to Oxford hotels; for he ran over the several items of the bill with a look in which surprise contended with indignation for the mastery, while the muffin-faced waiter handled his plated salver, and looked fixedly at nothing. Mr. Green, however, refraining from observations, paid the bill; and, muffling himself in greatcoat and travelling-cap, he prepared himself to take a comfortable journey back to Warwickshire, inside the Birmingham and Oxford coach. It was not loaded in the same way that it had been when he came up by it, and his fellow-passengers were of a very different description; and it must be confessed that, in the absence of Mr. Bouncer's tin horn, the attacks of intrusive terriers, and the involuntary fumigation of himself with tobacco (although its presence was still perceptible within the coach), Mr. Green found his journey ~from~ Oxford much more agreeable than it had been ~to~ that place. He took an affectionate farewell of his son, somewhat after the manner of the "heavy fathers" of the stage; and then the coach bore him away from the last lingering look of our hero, who felt any thing but heroic at being left for the first time in his life to shift for himself. His luggage had been sent up to Brazenface, so thither he turned his steps, and with some little difficulty found his room. Mr. Filcher had partly unpacked his master's things, and had left everything uncomfortable and in "the most admired disorder"; and Mr. Verdant Green sat himself down upon the "practicable" window-seat, and resigned himself to his thoughts. If they had not already flown to the Manor Green, they would soon have been carried there; for a German band, just outside the college-gates, began to play "Home, sweet home," with that truth and