“But we can exclude the Press,” Mr Prew urged. “In fact we ought to exclude the Press. It’s not a public meeting. Nobody will be admitted who cannot show his or her card of membership. Of course if you decide that you cannot take the chair we must bow to the inevitable, but at the risk of committing a nuisance … I should say rather of being a nuisance,” Mr Prew hastily corrected in answer to the surprised expression on Lord Buntingdon’s melon-shaped face, “at the risk, I say, of being too persistent I must beg you to change your mind and agree to take the chair on Friday evening. You have taken the chair on all the momentous occasions in the Union’s history. It was you who put to the vote the question of supplying hotels with green signboards painted N.U.H. in white letters under our device of the crossed staffs and our motto Hike On—Hike Ever. It was you who signed your name at the head of the protest to the Editors of the Concise Oxford Dictionary because the word ‘hike’ was not yet included in their columns. Lord Buntingdon, please, please recall the great Annual Hikery, growing in size and importance every year, which is held in the park of Ouse Hall and try to imagine what it would mean to those splendid young people if their beloved President failed to lead the Hikers’ Song,

“Hike, hike, hike along the high road,

Hike, hike, hike along the low,

Hike across the bens, hike across the fens,

Hike, hike, hike, never ride a bike,

And carry with a smile your load,

Boys and girls, hike, hike, as fast as you like,

And hike, if you like, as slow.

Boys and girls, hike together, for it’s always hikers’ weather,

And sing the hikers’ song as you go.”

Mr Sydney Prew’s prim voice did not do justice to the Hikers’ Song, but Lord Buntingdon in fancy heard it rolling from the voices of happy young people massed upon the great lawn at Ouse Hall. The spirit that led the first Earl of Buntingdon to whistle James II out of England and himself into an Earldom abode in the seventh Earl of Buntingdon.

“Very well, Mr Prew, I will take the chair on Friday,” he said.

“Oh, huzza!” the Secretary exclaimed with prim enthusiasm. “I wonder if I may use your telephone, Lord Buntingdon?”

“Certainly.”

“I know Mr Buckham is hanging on to the other end, as the picturesque phrase hath it, hoping to have word with me that you will take the chair on Friday.”

“No Press,” Lord Buntingdon reminded him.

“No Press. Except a great press of young people, I hope,” Mr Prew added archly, as he tripped out of the library to telephone the Acting President.