For the last year or two, it had been
considered almost as much a matter of course that a Cambridge
undergraduate should go to the Derby as that a Member of
Parliament should do so. Against this three or four rigid
disciplinarians had raised their voices,--and as a result, no young
man up at Trinity could get leave to be away on the Derby pretext.
Lord Gerald raged against the restriction very loudly. He at first
proclaimed his intention of ignoring the college authorities
altogether. Of course he would be expelled. But the order itself
was to his thinking so absurd,--the idea that he should not see his
brother's horse run was so extravagant,--that he argued that his
father could not be angry with him for incurring dismissal in so
excellent a cause. But his brother saw things in a different
light. He knew how his father had looked at him when he had been
sent away from Oxford, and he counselled moderation. Gerald should
see the Derby, but should not encounter that heaviest wrath of all
which comes from a man's not sleeping beneath his college roof.
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