interesting, but at the same time it is difficult. Hence the cow.
She seemed to make things easier. She was so familiar, so solid,
that surely the truths that she illustrated would in time become
familiar and solid also. Is the cow there or not? This was better
than deciding between objectivity and subjectivity. So at
Oxford, just at the same time, one was asking, "What do our
rooms look like in the vac.?"

"Look here, Ansell. I'm there--in the meadow--the cow's
there. You're there--the cow's there. Do you agree so far?"
"Well?"

"Well, if you go, the cow stops; but if I go, the cow goes.
Then what will happen if you stop and I go?"

Several voices cried out that this was quibbling.

"I know it is," said the speaker brightly, and silence
descended again, while they tried honestly to think the
matter out.

Rickie, on whose carpet the matches were being dropped, did not
like to join in the discussion. It was too difficult
for him. He could not even quibble. If he spoke, he should
simply make himself a fool. He preferred to listen, and to
watch the tobacco-smoke stealing out past the window-seat
into the tranquil October air. He could see the court too,
and the college cat teasing the college tortoise, and the
kitchen-men with supper-trays upon their heads. Hot food
for one--that must be for the geographical don, who never