"Now see here," said the doctor, "there's no use talking to me now. I can't attend to ye. All of ye come back here in an hour and take the oath, all together mind."
"I merely wished to state, Doctor L----," began the wondering Forster.
"Sir I tell ye I can't attend to ye now. You must come again," and he was gone.
I was at the back of the room, when my friend joined me, very ruminative and serious. "Very odd, all this," he said, "but I suppose when we _do_ come back, it will be all right?"
"Oh yes, he is noted as an odd man," I said.
"I don't at all understand him, but I suppose it _is_ all right. Well come along, my dear friend." I then left him for a while. After the hour's interval I returned. The next thing I saw from the back of the room was my burly friend in the front row of a number of irreverent youngsters of juvenile age, some of whom close by me were saying, "Who's the stout old bloke; what's he doing here?"
"Now," said the Bursar and senior fellow, "take these Testaments on your hands, all o' ye." And then I saw my venerable friend, for so he looked in comparison, with three youths sharing his Testament with them. But he was serious. For here was a most solemn duty before him. "Now repeat after me. _Ego_," a shout, "_Joannes, Carolus_," as the case might be "_juro solemniter_," &c. Forster might have been in church going through a marriage ceremony, so reverently did he repeat the _formula_. The lads were making a joke of it.
Forster, as I said, was indeed a man of the old fashion of gallantry, making his approaches where he admired _sans cérémonie_, and advancing boldly to capture the fort. I remember a dinner, with a young lady who had a lovely voice, and who sang after the dinner to the general admiration. Forster had never seen her before, but when she was pressed to sing again and again, and refused positively, I was amazed to see Forster triumphantly passing through the crowded room, the fair one on his arm, he patting one of her small hands which he held in his own! She was flattered immensely and unresisting; the gallant Foster had carried all before him. This was his way, never would he be second fiddle anywhere if he could help it. Not a bad principle for any one if they can only manage it.