In this same year (1896) I was staying in Cambridge for the first time in my life.
Oxford I have known since girlhood, but this was my first visit to the Sister University; needless to say, however, that I have met many men who have graduated there. Not knowing the town of Cambridge myself, I had never made it a subject of discussion, and ten years ago I was not even aware that such a street as Trumpington Street existed, difficult as it may be for Cambridge people to credit this statement.
In any case, most emphatically, I did _not_ know that a very old friend of mine, who became later in life a judge, had ever lived in this street.
Having been a sailor in youth, he had gone up to Cambridge comparatively late; this was shortly before my acquaintance with him began.
Not knowing Cambridge at all, the question of where he lived there had never entered into our conversations together. Probably I took it for granted that he was living in his college (Peterhouse). The strong feeling of friendship between us had become a warmer sentiment on his side, and this led later, and inevitably, to a thorough break in our pleasant relations with each other.
Long years passed, during which I neither saw nor heard of my friend.
I knew that he had married, and had had a somewhat successful career as a barrister in London, and that was all I knew about him.
After staying for a week or two with friends in the neighbourhood of Cambridge in 1896, I had taken rooms for a month _in_ Cambridge, inviting one of these friends to stay with me as my guest.
We came upon these special rooms in a curious way. Having worked through a list of those suggested to us by a friend, none of which quite suited, I heard, by the merest chance, that possibly I might find what I wanted in Trumpington Street, at the house of a very respectable Cambridge tradesman. We went there, but only to find that the rooms vacant could not be ready for me at the time specified, as some old customers were coming to them for three or four days.
"But I want them for a _month_," I expostulated.
The landlady was firm; she could not disappoint these people after promising to take them in.
In spite of my disappointment, I admired her so much for this strict sense of honour that I determined to look at the rooms in case of requiring any at a future date.