Arthur Pendennis, said, he should be happy to give him the best
set of rooms to be had in college--a gentleman-pensioner's set, indeed,
which were just luckily vacant. So they parted until dinner-time, which
was very near at hand, and Major Pendennis pronounced Mr. Buck to be
uncommonly civil indeed. Indeed when a College Magnate takes the trouble
to be polite, there is no man more splendidly courteous. Immersed in
their books and excluded from the world by the gravity of their
occupations, these reverend men assume a solemn magnificence of
compliment in which they rustle and swell as in their grand robes of
state. Those silks and brocades are not put on for all comers or every
day.
When the two gentlemen had taken leave of the tutor in his study, and had
returned to Mr. Buck's ante-room, or lecture-room, a very handsome
apartment, turkey-carpeted, and hung with excellent prints and richly
framed pictures, they found the tutor's servant already in waiting there,
accompanied by a man with a bag full of caps and a number of gowns, from
which Pen might select a cap and gown for himself, and the servant, no
doubt, would get a commission proportionable to the service done by him.
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