"The wealth of youth, we spent it well
And decently, as very few can.
And is it lost? I cannot tell:
And what is more I doubt if you can."
HILAIRE BELLOC.

YEARS OF PLENTY

BY IVOR BROWN

LONDON
MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET
ADELPHI

First Published 1915

CONTENTS

[BOOK ONE: SCHOOL]

[BOOK TWO: UNIVERSITY]

BOOK ONE

SCHOOL

I

Life seemed to Martin Leigh, as he gazed at the wooden walls of his cubicle, very overwhelming: there were so many things to remember. He had lived through his first day as a boarder at a public school and at length he had the great joy of knowing that for nine hours there would be nothing to find out. He seemed to have been finding things out ever since seven o'clock that morning: finding out his form and his form master, his desk at school and his desk in the house, his place in chapel and his place at meals, his hours of work and his field for play. He had moved in a world of mystery, a world of doors which had to be opened and of locks which had to be picked. It had been terrifying work, this probing of places.

All day Martin had been shown things by formidable people in a hustling, inadequate way: he had been far too awed by the majesty of his conductors to ask any questions and he realised now that he had forgotten nearly all that he had been told. He knew that he was in the Lower Fifth, Classical, and that his form master was a renowned terror: he knew also that he was supposed to play football with the other small boys of his house in a muddy-looking field some distance away. But his place in chapel ... that had vanished entirely from his mind. And to-morrow morning he would either have to pluck up his scanty courage and make a fool of himself by asking one of the formidable people, or else trust to luck and probably make an even greater fool of himself by wandering disconsolate in the aisle. He was vague also as to the locality of the Lower Fifth classroom: there was, indeed, one other member of that form in the house, but he was a gigantic, moustachioed person, a man of weight in the football world: to approach him would be impossible. Martin came to the conclusion that not only would chapel make him notorious for life, but that he would also get lost in school and reach his classroom late: then he would come in blushing, amidst the smiles of the superior. And the Terror would not rage and swear like a gentleman: he would smile, as he had smiled that morning, and make a little joke.

Life was undoubtedly overwhelming. And there were other no less cruel facts to face. His collars were all wrong. All the other new boys, he had noticed, wore Eton collars: these, apparently, should be retained for a few terms, until the owner considered himself sufficiently dignified for 'stick-ups.' Martin, who was fourteen and tall for his age, had been sent to school with 'stick-ups' and no Eton collars. He saw at once the horrid nature of his offence: it was side of the first degree, involuntary side, but who would know that, much less conjecture it? The new boys, as timid as himself, had of course said nothing, but he had observed the smiles and queer looks of the people about a year older, who had themselves only just assumed the emblem of position. It was a very awkward and bothering occurrence, and he had already written home for others to be sent as soon as possible. In reality Martin was more worried about this than about all the information he had forgotten. What made him dread the morrow with a fear he had never known before was not so much the possibility of his wandering about school and chapel like a lost sheep, but the certainty that he would be dressed in open defiance of all the sartorial traditions of Elfrey School.

Martin tried to console himself with the reflection that nothing could now deprive him of nine hours' peace. He was glad that he was allowed a cubicle and could enjoy a certain amount of privacy: he had anticipated a large, bare room with rows of beds and the continual shower, so dear to the books of his youth, of hurtling slippers and sponges. Instead he had found a comfortable dormitory with a broad passage separating two rows of nine wooden-sided cubicles. As far as he could gather most of the boys adorned their cubicles with family photographs, presumably because they were content with a hasty glance at their parents and sisters during the shamefully few seconds in which the acts of washing and dressing were completed: their actresses they pinned inside their workroom desks, or, if they were study owners, hung on their walls so that the long watches of the day were not uncomforted. It struck Martin that here was another gap: he had not brought with him any family photographs, and he expected that to seem unfilial would be very bad form: nor had he a favourite actress. He would have, he saw, to ask for his family photographs to be sent with the Eton collars and the sardines, which he had discovered at tea to be essential to the good life. The actress problem could be dealt with later.

The rules of the dormitory were strict. Lights were turned out at ten and no one could leave his cubicle without permission. No talking was allowed after 'Lights out.' But to-night things were disorganised. In the first place, Moore was the prefect on duty, an occurrence which usually meant that no one was on duty, for it was Moore's habit to go back to his study to find a book and then to forget about returning. And besides it was only natural that at the beginning of term discipline should not be established in all its accustomed rigour. Everyone, except the six new boys, had plenty to say, and in the prolonged absence of Moore they passed freely about from cubicle to cubicle. It was already a quarter past ten.

Martin, of course, lay quietly in bed gazing at the cracks in the plaster above him and wondering how long it would be before the lights went out and sleep became possible. His thoughts shifted painfully from chapel to collars, from collars to the Lower Fifth. This invasion of a new world which had seemed only a week ago to be so supreme an adventure was nothing but a nuisance and an agony. His sole comfort lay in the reflection that bed, even a hard, knobbly, school bed is an excellent place: here at least there was nothing to find out.

Suddenly he realised that a conversation was in progress close to the curtain of his cubicle. Cullen, his neighbour in the dormitory, was talking to a friend called Neave: already he had marked them both as giants of a year's standing, youthful bloods of surpassing glory.

"I've got a ripping photo of Sally Savoy," said Cullen.

"She's a bit of fluff for you," answered Neave.

"Yes, by gum. My brother at Sandhurst told me a grand story about her."

"What was it?"

"It's jolly hot stuff."

"All the better. Let's have it."

Then Cullen launched out. Martin, who could not help overhearing every word, understood the beginning of the tale, but just when Neave's exclamation betrayed the listener's thrill, he found it unintelligible. And later on there was the recitation of a Limerick which he could not at all understand. It was not that anything deeply wicked was related, but Martin had been a day boy at his private school and had only received a vague impression of the ways of nature and of man. Never before had it struck him how confused and ignorant he was.

Then a mighty voice roared: "What the deuce are you all playing at?" Numerous forms in more or less advanced stages of nudity started like rabbits to their proper cubicles, while Moore bellowed in the doorway. If it had been anyone but Moore there would have been a row: but Moore was an angel and never did anything but shout. The lights were turned down and the voices died away.

Cullen took one lingering glance at Sally before he put her away and said his prayers: Neave, having ended his supplications, lay chuckling quietly in bed. Martin began to feel acutely miserable. In spite of all his hopes that the dormitory would bring him peace, he had only come across another door which had to be opened. There was no escape: he would have to find out, for he might be expected to join in one of these conversations and then he would be shown up. He would have to discover some decent new boy and question him tactfully. It would be embarrassing: it would be perfect hell: but it would be inevitable. He began to wish he was back in Devonshire, at home. God, how he loathed Life and Elfrey and Sally Savoy: he wanted ... but just when, in spite of the promptings of conscience, he was yielding to the soft embrace of sentiment and memory, sleep saved the situation.

II

It is one of the world's happiest phenomena that pessimism, by creating expectations gloomier far than any possible event, destroys by that very process its raison d'être. For Martin the future had, almost of necessity, to be brighter than its promise. He was pushed into his right place in chapel and found his way, without undue meandering, to the Lower Fifth classroom: he even appeased the Terror by his ability to explain the history of the genitive case in Greek. A schoolmaster's lot is hard enough without his making it worse, and the Terror sensibly seized any opportunity of investing his work with an element of real interest. With the bloods who found higher progress impossible and remained to clog the Lower Fifth, it was always routine: but Martin had come with a scholarship and was capable of an ingenious and tasteful turn in translation. He was obviously a boy in whom an interest could be taken, and the Terror warmed to him even to the extent of abandoning the sardonic humour on which he so prided himself. According to all the best traditions of scholastic fiction, Martin should have been unpopular for this reason, but as a matter of fact the bloods were far too bored with the Terror and all his works, and far too contemptuous of all clever kids and 'sweat-guts,' to take the least notice of what happened: or, if they did take notice, they were not going to give themselves away by showing it.

The collar problem had been the hardest to face, and Martin still longed eagerly for the Etons to arrive. As for the question of Neave, Cullen, and Sally Savoy, he found that here too his fears had been exaggerated. Most of the smaller boys did not talk on this subject: Neave and Cullen turned out to be remote and superior creatures: by their well-oiled hair and exquisite variety of ties and socks and handkerchiefs they revealed the majesty of their doggishness. But Martin was not prepared to run any risks: he became intimate with the most imposing of the new boys, one Caruth, and plied him with questions. He saw plainly that it was an ordeal which had to be gone through if he was ever to attain peace of mind, and consequently he bravely endured Caruth's surprise at the deficiencies in his knowledge. Martin had foolishly begun by hinting that he really knew a good deal and only wanted a few supplementary details, but he soon discovered that he was giving himself most terribly away. Then he broke down and confessed his ignorance.

"You are a kid," said Caruth. "You with your stick-ups!"

"Well, it's not my fault," protested Martin.

Thereupon Caruth became very patronising and talked to him at length, telling him much that was true and more that was false: he also gave information as to suitable passages in Shakespeare and the Bible for the confirmation of theory. At first Martin was sickened and disgusted by his investigations, but his sense of repulsion was soon outweighed by the consideration that another barrier had been broken down and that now he could join in conversation, if need be, without that gnawing fear of being shown up. Caruth had the decency not to betray Martin's ignorance to the other new boys.

Martin was in Berney's house. Berney's had a reputation for mediocrity—that is to say, it rarely won many challenge cups, and those which it did hold were gained more often by individuals than by teams. Berney's usually had some brilliant athletes, but it never succeeded in training good sides. Occasionally at the bidding of a conscientious prefect it made an effort; but its efforts were nearly always in vain. Berney's had a lofty contempt for pot-hunting, which the other houses of course attributed to jealousy. When Martin came to Berney's the house was in its usual state: two of the prefects, Jamieson and Parker, were very clever men but indifferent athletes: the other two, Moore and Leopard, were brilliant athletes and not at all clever. The house as a whole was listless and apathetic, and there was a healthy spirit of tolerance resulting in the formation of groups. There was a doggish group, which discussed socks and hair oil and other more exciting things, a young athletic group, a group of 'sweat-guts,' and a group of complete nullities. The new boys remained in a bunch until half-term and then began to drift to their appropriate circles. Martin, reasoning from certain conversations at his private school, had been afraid that the new boys might have a rough time. Nothing of the sort occurred. They were left very much alone and, as long as they put on no side, received quite reasonable treatment. In all his career at Elfrey Martin never saw a fight or a case of bullying: at times there would be a little playful ragging, and insolence usually met with its reward, but there was no systematic oppression. Above all, the 'sweat-guts,' though they might be laughed at now and then, were never persecuted.

At the end of this second week Martin received two invitations to supper. One was from Mrs Berney, the other from Mrs Foskett, the headmaster's wife. Mrs Berney's hospitality came first. Instead of going in to house tea and eating bread and butter and whatever else he chose to provide for himself, he went to the front part of the house with a clean collar (Eton by now) and hair 'sloshed' down with copious water. There he met Caruth and two others, all equally wet about the hair. They were fed with fried soles, cold tongue, meringues, tea, toast, and marmalade—not at all a bad business, thought Martin, and well worth the previous exertions of the toilet.

Mr Berney sat at the head of the table. He was a little, freckled man with a fair moustache: he had become a schoolmaster through despair and a housemaster through patience. His chief interest lay in natural history and botany, and he was never so happy as when he forgot all about the school and his house and tramped the surrounding country. He managed his house with a bare minimum of efficiency and was never loved and never hated. In the routine of teaching at school and administration at home he worked steadily, without mistakes and without enthusiasm. He said all that a housemaster ought to say about games and work and religion and moral tone without stopping to think whether it was desirable or even consistent, for he had long ago discovered that to start thinking would be to court anxiety, if not disaster. He lived, on the whole, for his holidays.

At the other end of the table was his wife, small and dark and interesting. She it was who ran the house, not because she liked it, but because she worshipped her husband and knew that he loathed responsibility. She was popular with the boys, who could pardon her complete inability to understand games (a heinous sin in a housemaster's wife) because of her unfailing kindness and sympathy. She fed them well, as schools go, believed in culture, and used to gather select spirits to read poetry in her drawing-room.

Martin sat next to her and found her easy to talk to. She too was relieved, because she usually had to struggle with an athletic conversation, a prolonged torture in which she would cause horror and dismay by confusing half-backs and cover-points. But Martin could talk about books and even pictures: she became interested and forgot to dole out meringues, until, reminded by her husband, she looked up and saw with shame the expectant faces of her guests. Afterwards she took them to her comfortable drawing-room and talked on general school subjects: she kept them until she was certain that of this batch Martin alone had possibilities. Then she drove them to prep.

The Fosketts, as befitted a headmaster and his wife, were more formidable. To begin with, their hospitality involved, in addition to the clean collar and sloshed hair, the wearing of Sunday clothes and the completion of prep in odd moments. The six new boys at Berney's all went together, very timid and overwhelmed at the thought of being entertained by one so remote and so tremendous as the Head. He was not in their eyes so infinitely great as Llewelyn, the Captain of Football: but, distinctly, he counted.

Foskett was one of the new headmasters. He was young (Elfrey figured early in the cursus honorum of one who aspired to the greatest thrones), and he had declined to take holy orders. But, though fashionably sceptical about the hardest dogmas, he believed intensely in all the right things, in the Classics and the Empire and Moral Tone and the Educational Value of Athletics and Our Duty to the Poor and the Need for Personal Service. Consequently his name was already a byword with all the conscientious young men in London and at the universities who form quasi-religious clubs and believe that the world can be reformed by heartiness and committee meetings. Foskett was a very able man, who knew quite well what he wanted and was determined to get it: being an Englishman to the backbone, he combined an affection for the word Duty with an invincible belief that Duty, for him, always corresponded with his own particular ambitions. He was by no means a hypocrite: it simply never occurred to him that his policy of 'getting on' might be inconsistent with some of his moral ideals. While he had chosen to disguise the more unpalatable articles of faith with a sugary paste of scientific catch-words, he never questioned the absolute value of Christian Morality.

He had married, characteristically, the daughter of a colonial bishop, a tall, gaunt woman with sparkling eyes and an immense capacity for enthusiasm. Not only was she prepared to take up all her husband's causes, but she also took up him and worshipped at his shrine with a persistent and unflinching devotion. He represented for her all that was estimable: he was strong and wise and pure: he was just the man to mould the lives and ideals of the new generation, to make the finest religion and the finest patriotism vital forces in the school, and to pass through the richest headmasterships in England to a dignified old age as head of an Oxford college. They were both of them supremely methodical, and she bore him a child every three years. Naturally her guests were overwhelmed. While Foskett looked quiet and authoritative and made bad jokes in a quaint, theoretic manner at the head of the table, his wife chattered and gushed and became vastly enthusiastic over house junior football teams and the personnel of next year's cricket eleven. Her grasp of detail and statistics carried dismay even to boys. Martin was glad that he was in the middle of the table and avoided the necessity of making conversation.

"Medio tutissimus ibis," he quoted to himself from that morning's 'trans' as he listened to Caruth, who had used Brilliantine instead of water and was eager to shine socially, answering her questions and assenting to her tremendous declamations.

"Isn't it splendid," said Mrs Foskett, "about the school athletics? When we first came here Elfrey hardly ever won its school matches and now we never get beaten. Fermor's play last summer was marvellous, positively marvellous. D'you know, he actually got fifty wickets for 9.76 and had a batting average of 37. He's sure to get a blue at Cambridge. The last Elfreyan to get a blue was Staples: he made 74 at Lord's and was run out by an Old Etonian."

"Hard luck," said Caruth. "I do think being run out is rotten."

"Are you a cricketer?" continued Mrs Foskett.

"Well, I was captain of my preparatory school," said Caruth, assuming the humble voice and depreciatory smile that betoken a proper modesty. "But of course that's not much."

"It's the best beginning. You're sure to play for the school before you're done."

"Oh, I don't suppose so," answered Caruth. He felt it to be an inefficient answer and wondered, fingering his tie, what the ideal reply would have been. Would 'Oh, Mrs Foskett!' have been too familiar?

Then it turned out that Caruth had been to Murren for the winter sports. This was one of Mrs Foskett's well-known themes. Her subjects included Greece, Switzerland, Patriotism, Sport, and the Nobility.

"Oh, I think Murren's so lovely," she began. "To be so high up, right above those Wengen people. I love ski-ing. And the sun. And the glorious air. There's nothing like it. And such nice people. Such really charming people. Last winter we met Lord and Lady Dalston. They're so interested in the personal side of Social Service. Lord Dalston has a club in the Mile End Road, and in the evenings he goes and sings there himself—such a beautiful voice. Of course they don't get many people yet because of——"

"The picture palaces," suggested Caruth nobly. He thought it about time that he got a word in and was eager to excuse the scandalous absence of appreciation of Lord Dalston's art.

"Yes, those terrible places. And they do have such sensational films in the East End. I'm sure they have a bad influence. What the people really need is a drill hall with exercises and good music. I've been putting the case to Lady Dalston."

"Rather," said Caruth, who was himself a staunch patron of the pictorial drama. And then he added: "I think National Service would be a good thing for the poor."

He had given Mrs Foskett her cue. She broke out into a triumph song in whose turbulent flow the words 'physique' and 'efficiency' came frequently rolling. She was careful to say that she was not a militantist and hated the thought of war, but she didn't see any harm in teaching people how to shoot one another if need be. "War's so educational," she ended. "Brings out the strength of the nation."

And then there floated from the other end of the table the throaty voice of the Head as he told an antique Jowett story, which had been picked up in his under-graduate days and always did good service when the flame of conversation flickered.

Martin, sitting silently in the middle of the table, concentrated on the supper. It was worth all the attention he gave it. He managed to consume a plate of soup, some fried sole, two sausages and bacon, one helping of trifle and one of fruit salad, and as much dessert and chocolate as came his way. The Fosketts certainly understood the art of feeding.

Afterwards there was a feeble attempt made to play some games, but not even Mrs Foskett could overcome the self-consciousness of her guests. Interest waned and the Head's jokes became worse and worse. They were all relieved when the time came for departure.

As they walked back Caruth, who was secretly pleased with his conversational display, said loftily: "Thank the Lord that's over."

Martin answered: "I should think so. Ghastly show." In reality he was thinking, 'Ripping grub.' He was not a particularly greedy person, but Elfrey air is keen and any growing boy can appreciate a solid meal about half-past six. Martin was quite prepared, for his part, to change his clothes and undergo the ordeal of any company, even Mrs Foskett's, for the sake of a meal which included sausages and trifle.

III

Elfrey was one of the numerous public schools brought into existence by the sudden growth of the middle class during the nineteenth century. Consequently it had neither money nor traditions. The lack of the former was a severe handicap and could only result in the scandalous underpayment of the masters and the abominable necessity of sending round the hat, which of course returned half empty, whenever the school needed a new building or playing-field. The absence of the latter was more wholesome. Everyone had a hearty contempt for Eton and Harrow and Winchester and considered that the fuss made about them was ridiculous. "We could have damped the lot at cricket last summer" was the general opinion, and it may have been correct, so great had Fermor been. How far this attitude was based on mere jealousy, and how far it represented a sound distrust of top-hats, side, and antiquated customs, it would be difficult to decide. As a result of their abhorrence for tradition, Elfrey had no organised system of fagging, and each house had established its own regime.

At Berney's any prefect or member of the Sixth could, theoretically, command the services of anyone who had not a study; but this right was little used, and it was generally felt that too great assumption on the part of a Sixth would lead to unpopularity.

Prefects, however, as opposed to Sixths, were accustomed to take unto themselves a small boy and give him the use of their study on the condition that he dusted it, cleaned their cups and plates, and made himself generally useful. Although this office received the derogatory title of 'being study-slut,' it was, on the whole, rather sought after, as only the more attractive and popular members of the workroom were chosen for the position.

Martin was therefore considerably surprised when one of the prefects, called Leopard, adopted him in the fourth week of term. Leopard was a genuine Olympian. He had played with distinction in the historic Elfreyan eleven of last summer: he was school sports champion: he had played rackets for Elfrey at Queen's Club: and now he was being tried as wing three-quarter in the rugger team. By specialising in science he had scraped into a Sixth, and he was intending to continue his athletic, if not his scientific, career at Cambridge. This ambition, however, necessitated the study of Greek, and the study of Greek necessitated for a scientist laborious days. Leopard had discovered that Martin was in the Lower Fifth and could write Greek prose without howlers. He seemed also to be quite an attractive individual, and neither law nor custom forbade the acquisition of a second menial. So Martin became, to his own great satisfaction, the junior study-slut of Leopard.

Pearson, his senior in that office, naturally attempted to make him do all the work of tidying, but Leopard put an end to that, and it was soon understood that Martin's function was the composition of correct Greek prose. This he fulfilled efficiently and Leopard, who had recently been harried by his instructor in Greek in a way quite revolting to his dignity and self-respect, found life at once more easy and more honourable. He became very intimate with Martin and would talk to him at great length in a patronising but amusing way: he would even allow Martin to rag him and call him by his nickname, Spots.

Inevitably Martin worshipped Spots. The study became to him a temple, a very awful and a sacred place. On its walls were scores of photographs, signed pictures of school bloods past and present, photographs of elevens, photographs of fifteens, photographs of the Racket Pair, and photographs of a girl, who was usually on horseback. These last were carefully framed and signed in round, sprawling letters, 'Kiddie.' Martin, as he gazed upon them, began to form conceptions of the perfect life. There was a bookcase, too, with a fine collection of shilling novels whose paper covers bore lurid pictures of Life and Love. In spite of a certain monotony of theme and a devastating dullness in its elaboration, Spots seemed to derive considerable pleasure from those works, which he always read while Martin was doing his Greek prose. Martin was kept too busy to do much reading, but he appreciated the pictures on the covers and was impressed by the dark-eyed women in red who accepted on divans the passionate kisses of blond young men in faultless evening dress. The room also contained some old swords (bought from a predecessor), a number of rackets, a bag of golf-clubs, and a fine array of cushions with humorous designs. The culinary outfit and china were complete to the verge of opulence. The Leopard's Den, as the study was commonly called, had achieved a certain reputation for magnificence, a reputation in which Martin gloried. He even enjoyed the dusting and cleaning and despised Pearson for his laziness and lack of proper pride. But it was not mere priggishness that animated him.

Meanwhile Mrs Berney had not forgotten his possibilities, and it was arranged that he should attend her poetry circle which met after prayers on Saturday evenings. It was composed mainly of older boys, and two of them were vast intellectuals in the Upper Sixth, so that Martin felt very awed at the prospect of reading Keats amid such company. One of them was actually the school poet and had lately worked off in The Elfreyan the emotions evoked by a summer holiday in the Lakes:

"The flaming bracken fires the breast
Of bosky Borrowdale,
Down swoops the sun in a riot of red
Behind Scawfell to a watery bed,
And the moon hath clomb o'er Skiddaw's head,
So perfect and so pale."

Martin, who had also been in the Lakes, thought this rather good and much better than Wordsworth. He was still a Tennysonian and connected poetry with the lavish use of alliteration and words like 'clomb' and 'bosky.' The thought that on the next Saturday evening he was to read in the company of such an one was as terrifying as it was inspiring. But it was not yet to be.

Leopard's one fault was, in Martin's opinion, his tendency to sulk: his career had been so uniformly successful that he was easily piqued by a reverse. Once or twice before Martin had thought it expedient to slip away quietly when he saw Spots looking black, but on this particular Saturday Fate fought against him. Leopard was dropped from the school fifteen for the match against Oxford A. It was admitted that once Leopard had the ball in his hands no one on earth could catch him, but it was rumoured that his defence was weak: it was always the way with these running-track sprinters; they couldn't tackle. So the captain had taken notice of a mere child of sixteen, called Raikes, who played "back" for his house and could tumble anybody over.

Oxford brought down a strong team, but they only won by sixteen points to eleven: and Raikes not only scored two excellent tries, but marked with unerring certainty the notable Rhodes scholar who had made history in South African Rugby. It was on the lips of all that Spots was in the soup or the apple-cart (the popularity of the rival metaphors was evenly balanced), and sporting members of Raikes' house were laying ten to one that their hero would be 'capped' within a month. Spots had watched the match dismally from the touch-line and he did not take it at all well. When he came back to Berney's his angry soul cried out for tea: and he found that all his cups were dirty. It was Pearson's duty to clean the cups, and Pearson was in 'sicker' with influenza. Martin had been told to do Pearson's work for the next few days, but he had not realised what Pearson really did and he had forgotten about the cups. Moreover, after watching the match, he had gone off to the tuck-shop to eat ham and chocolate: so Leopard shouted for him in vain, and then, spurning the proffered aid of sycophantic aliens, he furiously washed his own cups and made his own tea. An angry man does not lightly reject an excuse for wrath, and Spots thoroughly enjoyed the nursing of his grievance.

On his way back from the tuck-shop Martin borrowed a copy of Keats from the school library: then he settled down at his desk in the workroom and began to look through the Odes to see if there were any words that he could not pronounce. The meeting of the poetry circle was formidably near and the old fear of being shown up was vigorously attacking him.

Suddenly Caruth came up and said: "Spots wants you."

So he put away the book and went up to the study. He saw at once that Spots was in the blackest of moods.

"Why the blazes didn't you wash the cups?" he said. "I told you to do Pearson's work."

Martin trembled. "I forgot," he said. "I couldn't think of all the things Pearson did."

"I should have thought that the washing of cups might have struck you as a fairly obvious thing to do."

"Yes; I'm sorry."

"The fact of the matter is, you're getting a bit above yourself. Just because you're clever you think you're everyone. Now you're too good to wash cups."

"It wasn't that really, Leopard. I forgot."

"Well you damned well mustn't forget. You're too good to keep awake. That's just as bad. Now get out, you little beast, and come to me after prayers."

Martin went back to his Keats in misery. He could guess what was in store for him, but he could not be certain, because Spots might have recovered from his wrath by the appointed time and then he might treat the matter as a joke. But if Spots didn't recover ... well, then he would be swiped. Martin had never been caned at his private school and this would be his first experience; he wondered how much it would hurt. Then fear came surging over him, not the dread of anything definite, but the hideous fear of the unknown. He was not so much afraid that he would be hurt as that he would show that he had been hurt: that was the deadly, the unpardonable, sin. He wished to heaven he had been swiped before so that he might know his own capacity for endurance. Keats became intolerable. House tea was a long-drawn agony. Discussion centred on the match and the brilliant play of Raikes.

"What did old Spots want?" asked Caruth. "He seemed to be in the deuce of a hair."

"Only about cleaning cups," said Martin gloomily.

"Thank the Lord I'm not a study-slut. Was he very ratty?"

"Oh, not very. Flannery, you hog, pass the bread."

The conversation had at any cost to be changed, and Martin was pleased when the general attention was directed to the colossal hoggishness of Flannery, who was mixing jam, sardines, and potted meat.

As time went on the agony of suspense grew like an avalanche, carrying all before it. Martin did practically no work during prep. Impossible to linger over algebra or the Bacchæ when Spots and his cups obsessed the mind. It was not the injustice of being victimised for a slip of the memory when Pearson was in sicker, but the possibility of being shown up as a coward that tortured him most. He knew that other boys were swiped with some frequency and managed to pretend that they did not mind. But it might turn out that he was not so tough as other boys. Besides Spots had the wrist of a racket player and was renowned for his powers of castigation. And then there was the poetry circle. If the worst happened, he would have to cut that and explain afterwards. What on earth could he say? The thought was too horrid for consideration.

After prep and supper Mr Berney used to read prayers, while the boys knelt down and thought about any odd subject that came to mind. They were not, as a house, particularly irreligious, but it is astonishingly easy to acquire the habit of saying 'Amen' at the right place and repeating the Lord's Prayer without being aware of your actions. But to-night Martin was conscious of all that was said and did not open his lips. As he gazed in silence at the backs of the wooden benches he began to feel physically sick.

After prayers the house dispersed to talk, or finish work, or go to bed. Martin hurried to Leopard's study. There he waited for five age-long minutes: he felt that a hundred swipings would be better than this delay. The study seemed a vast blur of photographs, all dim and misty except one: that was a large picture of Kiddie, the equestrienne, who beamed on him from close at hand, gripping her riding-switch. Kiddie became the only object in the room. The smile and the switch fascinated him. They were symbolic, they were abominable. At this same Kiddie he had often gazed in rapturous worship, wondering whether Leopard was the more blessed for knowing her or she for knowing him. God, how he loathed her now.

At last Leopard arrived. The clouds had not lifted. He had just overheard Moore remarking to a friend that, as a three-quarter, Raikes was worth a dozen of Spots.

"Oh, you," he said quietly. "Just go to the prefects' common-room."

Martin turned and went out. His fate was settled. He felt, as he walked down the long passage listening to the tread of Leopard behind him, as though all his internal organs were falling into his feet.

When they reached the common-room Leopard turned up the light and locked the door. Then he took a cane from a cupboard in the corner and made Martin bend over with his head under the table. Leopard had suffered during the evening, for the almost certain loss of a rugger cap on which he had counted was a terrible blow to his pride and his ambitions. He was angry, desperately angry, and his only desire was to express his anger in action. The fact that he was fond of Martin only added piquancy to the situation. The maximum punishment that a house prefect could inflict was eight strokes. He did not stop short of his maximum.

After the first three strokes Martin felt as though nothing could prevent him crying out: then a blessed numbness seemed to come over him and he remained silent and motionless. Afterwards he had to climb on to the table and put out the light. Then he went upstairs to his cubicle: he was not in the mood for poetry. On such occasions rumour has swift wings, and when he reached the dormitory the news had magically been spread abroad.

Voices cried: "How many?"

"Eight."

"Did it hurt?"

"No, not much." He lied, for he had learned the tradition.

There were murmurs of: "Bad luck," "Old Spots is the limit," "Just because he got the chuck for not tackling."

And then Neave remarked in the midst of a silence: "If we get nailed funking a collar we get swiped. But if Spots gets nailed, then he swipes someone else. That's justice."

The expressions of genuine sympathy were very comforting to Martin. Though now the numbness was wearing off and the reality of his pain came home to him, he was happier than he had been for days. He had opened another door: he was getting on with his task of finding things out. Not only was the cruel suspense finished for ever, but he had learned his own capacities: he could stick it like the others. And to have the regard, the compassion, of one so great as Neave! He had suffered, he still suffered, but who would not suffer to become a martyr? He began to realise, as he pulled the bed-clothes over him, that Spots had not been the minister of a fortune sheerly malignant.

IV

In the morning Martin was stiff and sore and began his toilet by examining himself in a looking-glass: when he discovered the havoc that had been wrought he felt very proud of himself and knew that this appearance in the changing-room before football on Monday need cause him no distress: those who wanted to see the damage would have something to look at. The discomfort which he experienced during the day was quite outweighed by his satisfaction at his achievement and fortitude: that he was the first of the new boys to be swiped rendered him in their eyes a distinctly important person. Even Caruth, who always patronised Martin, began to climb down.

The Berneys had midday dinner with the house, and Martin succeeded in catching Mrs Berney as she left the dining-hall.

"I'm very sorry I couldn't come last night," he said, blushing.

"So am I. You must come next Saturday. What kept you?"

"Oh—er—I had to see one of the prefects," he answered with hesitation.

Mrs Berney, knowing that 'after prayers' was the hour of justice, could guess from the boy's manner what had occurred.

"That was a pity," she said kindly. And Martin knew that she knew. He felt prouder and more heroic than ever. Then she added: "Come in after prayers to-morrow night. There won't be anyone there."

"Oh, thank you very much," he said in ecstasy. He had become in a moment the slave and worshipper of Mrs Berney. Afterwards Caruth asked him the subject of his conversation with Mrs B., and he answered: "Oh, nothing." On Monday night he went to the drawing-room and read the odes with which the circle had dealt on Saturday. Mrs Berney gave him cocoa and cake and was entirely charming. As he left her he even thanked heaven for old Spots.

Leopard, on the other hand, was extremely angry with himself. He realised on the following day that he had behaved like a brute: under normal circumstances he would have ragged Martin and told him not to do it again. At the most a mild four would have been considered ample. But eight! It was undeniably excessive. If it had only been someone else it wouldn't have mattered so much (for abstract justice made no great appeal to Spots), but there was that kid slinking about his study and cleaning everything that he could lay hold of with maddening assiduity. Not for a moment could he forget his iniquity. One thing, however, was certain. It would be quite inconsistent with the dignity of a blood to say anything about what had occurred. So Martin noticed several changes in Spots' demeanour. He was more silent and did not rag him as before: nor did he follow his custom of bringing the Greek prose to Martin on Tuesdays and Fridays. Nobly he toiled at it alone and was roundly abused in form on the following days. But the memory of youth is short and soon they drifted back into the old friendly relations. Martin, however, took good care not to be guilty of further slips, for though he was glad now that he had been swiped, he did not in the least wish it to happen again.

The term ran smoothly on. Caruth was adopted, to his infinite joy, by Cullen and Neave and the youthful nuts, while Martin drifted into more soulful society. He was even taken up in a kindly way by the poet of Borrowdale, who lent him an anthology and used to hold forth to him about men and letters. Martin was very much impressed and could not decide what to think when Spots said the poet was a bilger. To Martin the voice of Spots was still the voice of a god. Later on he heard the poet call Spots 'a piffling Philistine,' but he did not know what it meant and was ashamed to ask. Life began to expand in many directions and new doors pressed themselves on his attention with haunting urgency. On the whole Martin was enjoying his first term.

And so he settled down gladly to the routine. School life is liable to a clearly marked dichotomy; there is a world of games and a world of work. For Martin both had their pleasure, both their monotony. Football, for instance, distinctly afforded moments. There were seventy minutes of consummate joy while the school, released from the round of "league" games, watched the match with their greatest rival, Ashminster. Martin never forgot that struggle. It was the first school match which he had been able to see, and he had not yet escaped from the age of worship, the age in which every blood is a true Olympian and reveals the deity as he walks. It was tremendous to watch Moore battling in the line-out, or Llewelyn heaving an enemy to the ground, or Raikes, capped now and the undisputed successor to Spots' position on the left wing, go plunging along the touch-line with that long and powerful stride. Martin could even forgive him for ousting Spots when he saw him pick up an opponent by the knees and pitch him a full three yards into touch.

For sixty minutes Martin stood wedged in a mass of shoving, bawling humanity. And he had bawled, bawled till his voice and breath were gone and he saw that he would need all his strength to avoid being barged out of his position in the front row, a treasured post won by a tedious wait. And now the long-drawn roar of 'Schoo-ool' went up almost in despair. Ashminster were leading by six points to three and Elfrey, with only ten minutes more, were being penned in their own twenty-five. Never had their prospects looked more gloomy: the forwards were losing the ball in the scrummage time after time and only the perfect tackling of the backs kept down the score. Suddenly Ross, on the right wing, intercepted a fumbled pass and was off. Someone shouted: "Kick, man, kick." But this was no moment for safety play, and Ross went on. Not till he was close to the fullback did he kick, and then it was no feeble punt into touch that he made, but a great swinging kick across field. For a moment there was a silence. Then a great roar went up, the greatest roar since the beginning of the match. Raikes, on the left wing, had foreseen the move, and following up with the speed of the wind had magnificently caught the ball and was making for the enemy's undefended line. It was the kind of movement that comes crashing into the mind of the spectator years later on without cause or suggestion just because it is unique.

But he was not over the line yet. Carter, the Ashminster centre, who had captained his school for three years and played for the Harlequins in the holidays, was in desperate pursuit. It was a race from the half-way line and Raikes had five yards' start. Martin, crushed against the ropes, hoarse and gasping, discerned with horror the deadly speed of Carter. It was growing dark and a November mist was creeping over the great field: impossible to trace that relentless pursuit: one could only wait and listen. A roar went up. Raikes had been collared. The teams gathered round the fallen figures and the referee. At last they parted. Ashminster remained on their line and Armstrong, the Elfrey scrum-half, was bringing out the ball. Raikes had fallen over the line in a central position. The school gave vent to a shout that stirred Mr Foskett to quote Homer on the wounded Ares. Llewelyn of course took the kick. A safe thing, one said. But now, incredibly, he failed. The ball trickled feebly along the ground and a vague moan passed down the ranks.

Six all and five minutes to go. Play settled down near half-way. Both teams were fighting like devils: and still there were found men to go down to the rushes. Then the Ashminster back miskicked in an effort to find touch. Llewelyn had made a mark. It was far off, but he was going to have a shot at goal. As the teams separated and Llewelyn balanced the ball in the half-back's hands, there was silence. Only here and there a muttered voice would be heard as someone strove to relieve the strain by objurgation.

"Callingham, you blighter, don't barge," or: "After you with my feet, Ginger," or: "Hack that stinker Murray, he's oiled up two places."

Then, as Llewelyn took his run and the enemy charged, there was no sound. The ball went soaring up. He had done it? The mist was ubiquitously damned. Then the touch-judges behind the goals raised their flags, a signal for the greatest roar of all. The match was over, gloriously over. It only remained to charge headlong to the tuck-shop and fight the whole game over again with ham and eggs or the succulent cho-hone.

These were moments.

Football too brought other, more directly personal, moments. There was the occasion when Moore and Spots came down to watch the juniors of Berney's and Martin scored a try beneath their awful gaze. Surely it was the very essence of triumph to see the enemy scowling on their goal-line while Berney's sauntered away with the ball, and to know that he and he alone was responsible for this cleavage of the hosts. Martin walked with all the tremendous humility of glowing pride. It was the first try he had ever scored, and Moore and Spots had seen it.

That evening Moore approached him after prayers.

"Hullo, Leigh," he said. "You scored this afternoon, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Martin, making a desperate effort to conceal his satisfaction.

"Well," answered Moore deliberately, "you hadn't any business to. You're a forward and it isn't your job to cut the scrum and lurk about for the ball. They were pushing us and it was a mere fluke that they kicked too hard. Anyhow the half could have scored: it was only a matter of going two or three yards. You ought to have been in the middle, shoving like hell. See?"

"Yes."

"Well, don't lurk any more, or there'll be trouble. It isn't a forward's business to score tries. Anyone can be a 'winger': it takes a man to shove."

Moore was one of the old school of forwards. He believed in foot-work and read The Morning Post.

"So don't let me catch you loafing outside the scrum again," he concluded. "There's quite enough chaps doing that already." And he strolled away.

Moore was not a person of much imagination and he never saw that he was not going the right way to make a great forward. A word of encouragement coming on the top of this, possibly injudicious, success would have made Martin play like a devil. Instead he deliberately slacked for a week.

Indeed footer, in spite of its moments, became monotonous. Martin had to play four and often five times a week in all weathers, and very often the sides were uneven and the game, consequently, a farce, a shivery, cheerless farce in which everyone longed for the pleasant signal for release. By the end of term nobody liked the games and everybody was as sick of the fields as of the classrooms. If was not merely that the games were too frequent, but that they were scarcely ever treated as games. As the end of the term approached, bringing with it challenge cup matches for old and young, house feeling ran strong and the various teams were goaded by their prefects with relentless severity. Sometimes whole fifteens would be swiped in turn for their failure to win matches, quite irrespective of their capacity to do so: slackness could always be alleged. At Berney's, it was true, no great rigour was displayed. Had Spots been captain more blood might have been shed, but Moore, who directed the house teams, was more lenient and rarely went further than guttural abuse and threats. Being, however, himself a forward, he instituted scrumming practice in the evenings, and Martin found himself being pushed about the house gymnasium at great pain to his ears and limbs, while larger boys planted shrewd and stinging blows on the prominent portions of the losing side: it was no fun being in the back row. As he shoved and groaned in the perspiring mass, there flamed across his mind the remark of a well-meaning aunt: 'How you will enjoy the games!' Martin was not particularly weak or unathletic: his physique and taste for games were quite up to the normal, but he did not stand alone when he proclaimed to his friends his weariness with the official recreation which only doubled life's burden.

"Of course," said Caruth, after scrumming practice one night, "it's awfully good for us. Bally influence and all that. You know what the crushers say."

"And they ought to know," added Martin, "as they never play, at least not compulsorily."

"Anyhow," said Caruth, "there is one comfort."

"What is that?"

"We don't have to sweat it out like Randall's. Their pre's make them groise at it all day and all night."

"Good job. The stinkers."

Martin's sympathy with the oppressed was not yet as strong as his hatred of Randall's, the pot hunters, the unspeakable.

Work with the Terror was not always terrible: for Martin it even had its moments. He enjoyed turning out a good verse or a good translation, and he enjoyed also the commendation that it won. The Terror, whose real name was Vickers, was a young man soured by misfortune. He had meant to go triumphantly to the Bar: he had connections, he had brains, he would rise. But a financial crisis in the family had left him in despair, too old to enter for the Civil Service, too poor to attempt the Bar in spite of his connections. He had drifted, of necessity, to the arduous, responsible, and despised task of moulding the future generation. The future generation, as represented by the Lower Fifth, Classical, of Elfrey, seemed to Vickers a loathsome crew, fit only to be the victim of the sarcastic tongue on which he prided himself. He hated the elderly bloods who remained calmly and irremovably at the bottom of the form: he hated the ink-stained urchins with brains who passed through his hands on their way to higher things. The Lower Fifth he held to be an abominable form because it was neither one thing nor the other. The teaching was not mere routine, the soulless cramming of impenetrable skulls: on the other hand, it wasn't like taking a Sixth. There were times, especially in the afternoons, when the frowst of the water-warmed room, the dingy walls and desks, the ponderous horror of mistranslated Æschylus, and the unmannered lumpishness of the human boy (average age sixteen) would all combine to play upon his nerves and to rend the amorphous thing which once had been an active, ambitious soul. Wearily he vented his wrath upon the form.

His method was, as a rule, the sarcasm courteous. He lounged magnificently while he played with his victim.

"Simpson!" This to a clever but idle youth remarkable for his large, inky hands and persistent untidiness of apparel. There was something in Simpson's grimy collars and straggling bootlaces that infuriated Vickers.

"Simpson!"

"Yes, sir?"

"You owe me, I think, a rendering of Virgil."

"Please, sir, I haven't quite finished it yet, sir."

"And how much, may I ask, have you finished?"

"Well, sir, last night I had the Agamemnon chorus."

"I see, Simpson. I see."

"Please, sir, I was very busy."

"Our Simpson was busy early this morning also, I suppose."

"Yes, sir."

"At your ablutions, I presume."

Here the form would laugh: Simpson's cleanliness was a standing joke.

"Please, sir, I didn't wake up very early."

"That was very distressing."

There was a silence. "Well, Simpson?" Vickers would continue in his softest tone.

Simpson gazed moodily at the desk, digging nibs into the wood.

"Our Simpson seems fonder of water than of Maro. We must tighten the bonds between Simpson and the poet. May I say the whole of the first Georgic this time?"

"Oh, sir."

"You think the quantity excessive?"

Simpson summoned up his courage and said he did think so.

"Ah, but the verse is so beautiful," came the answer. "I couldn't deprive you, Simpson. Anyhow, you may begin your magnum opus and let me know when you have reached line two hundred."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, Simpson, that will be delightful. You were translating, Grant, I think."

Vickers aimed at being a strong man and he never set a grammar paper in which he did not ask for a comment on the phrase:

"Oderint dum metuant."

"A capital sentiment, Simpson," he would say with his gentlest smile, as he mouthed out the words. But his pretensions were not idle, as was shown by the fact that he could lose his temper without becoming ridiculous. If a weaker man had called the giant Batson 'a contemptible ass,' Batson would have laughed and the form would have sniggered. But when Vickers flared up he commanded the silence of the greatest.

Vickers had a gift of phrase and Martin learned much from him, partly because he was so afraid that he always worked hard, and partly because Vickers took a fancy to him and would give him little hints about translation and composition which he did not choose to waste on the ruck. Martin was less inky and more intelligent than the average new boy who was placed in the Lower Fifth. Moreover, his fear of his master was obvious, and there was no more effective method of flattering Vickers than to fear him and to let your fear be seen.

Yet it was a relief, even to Martin, to escape from the tension of the Terror's classroom to the turbulent relaxation that prevailed in the dark chamber where Barmy Walters taught mathematics. Old Barmy suffered from acute poverty and incipient senile decay. He had once been a brilliant undergraduate at Cambridge and then a wrangler, a man with a future: he now lived in a red-brick villa with a chattering wife and two gaunt, unwedded daughters. For nearly forty years it had been his function to instruct the classical side in mathematics: he had never been a strong man, never fitted for his work. And so in spite of all his brilliance as a mathematician he had missed promotion, seen his chance of a house go by, and eventually lost grip. To retire was financially impossible (Elfrey was too poor a school to have a pension fund), and he stuck to his work grimly, sitting beneath his blackboard with an overcoat under his dusty gown, wheezing and grumbling and looking for his glasses. Plainly he could be ragged: and ragged he was without mercy or cessation. A couple of hours with the Terror had a vicious effect on the tempers of his victims, and Barmy Walters found in the Lower Fifth, coming straight from Vickers, torturers of a fiendish devilry.

To begin with, there was the distribution of the instrument-boxes before geometry. The boxes stood in great piles at the end of the room and it was the duty of the bottom boy to deal them round. It was also part of the established order of things that the bottom boy dropped the two and twenty boxes with a series of slow and deafening crashes. At the end he would say: "Oh, sir, I'm so sorry."

And Barmy would answer: "Um, ah. Really, really, you boys will shatter my nerves. How many times have I told you to be careful? Um, ah!"

Then there would be a rush to recover the boxes, a long, clattering rush with much jostling and swearing and spilling of ink, some of which would find its way to Barmy's glass of water. When peace had been restored people would begin to ask questions, to demand elaborate demonstrations on the blackboard, or to consume food. Barmy's room was renowned as a resort for picnics. Biscuits were popular in winter, but in summer there was a special line in fruit. Once a daring individual threw a biscuit at Barmy's head and hit him, whereupon he had to carry to his housemaster a note which began:

"DEAR RANDALL,—Morgan struck me with a macaroon."

The conjunction of the words 'strike' and 'macaroon' so pleased Mr Randall that he omitted to deal with Morgan.

All the obvious things were done to Barmy by one or other of his classes. Mice were brought into form and released, and once a grass snake. He found a hedgehog in his mortar-board. Barmy had an idea that fifty lines formed a long imposition and he used to whine out:

"Um, ah, boy, I'll give you a long day's work. Take fifty lines."

He would enter the imposition in a note-book which he left in his unlocked desk, and in the morning he would find 'shown up' written against it in his own handwriting. After a long day of wheezing and grumbling about his shattered nerves Barmy would be seen mounting his aged bicycle with fixed wheel and pedalling laboriously to the villa and the chattering wife and the gaunt, unwedded daughters. Yet perhaps he was not altogether unhappy, for, if a master is to be ragged, he may as well sink to the depths: the tragedy of the defenceless dotard has less pathos than the suffering of the young man with ideals, whose burning desire to teach well and to succeed is thwarted by just the slightest lack of that presence and authority which make the master.

Undoubtedly, however, Barmy could be hurt, and Martin was not old enough to understand the consummate brutality of the proceedings in that dismal room. Like all young schoolboys, Martin regarded a master or crusher as a natural foe, a person with whom truceless war is waged. If he is fool enough to let himself be ragged, that is his look-out: he has all the resources of punishment on his side and if he cannot use them he deserves no mercy. So Martin worked off his vitality in ragging, and, being of an ingenious turn of mind, became noted for the improvisation of new japes. He was patronised by the bloods of the form and enjoyed himself hugely: without realising the nature and results of his conduct, he even lay awake at nights devising new and exquisite methods for completing the destruction of Barmy's nervous system.

V

Every school, even so modern a foundation as Elfrey, has its traditional rows, its stories of rags perpetrated on a colossal scale by the heroes of old: but the modern schoolboy finds that, like fights, they don't happen. Martin's life moved calmly on and its monotony was only broken by sundry interludes, painful or humorous, with masters or prefects. Still, ragging old Barmy was tame enough and only once was he involved in a genuine row, an affair that counted and was history for several years. Partly because it was his only rag, and partly because it chanced to occur in his first term, while he was still very impressionable, the memory remained with him clearly and for ever. It is true also that he played a part in the drama and even was responsible for its name, so naturally he remembered that notable December night with its comradeship and perils and glorious achievement.

The end of term, so exasperating to the harried teacher, brings exhilaration to the taught. As Christmas approached Martin found prefectorial discipline slackening and, though exams might mean harder work in school, there was in the house a very agreeable relaxation of tension. Even games were taken less seriously, and one or two of the more audacious spirits actually cut without detection. But just as Berney's began to slacken their reins, Randall's, the neighbouring house, became more vigorous than usual: for Randall's were in the final of the "footer pot."

Berney's always objected to Randall's. This animosity might have been accounted for by the mere fact of neighbourship, but there was more in it than that. As was Athens to Sparta, so was Berney's house to Randall's. Berney's stood always for an easy-going tolerance and, though, for instance, it was not a particularly well-dressed house, it left its nuts in peace. In all its pursuits it was either brilliant or ineffectual, and, if it did anything at all, it did it beautifully: both in games and work it was a house of individuals. A typical batsman from Berney's would make three divine, soul-satisfying cuts and be caught in attempting an impossible fourth: Berney's was never thorough and never took defeat to heart.

Randall's, on the other hand, had no nuts and suspected with Draconian severity the faintest traces of nuttishness. The average member of the house was tall and lumpy and sallow, badly dressed and with no grease to his hair. It was a standing joke with the school that Randall's youths owed their yellow faces not only to general unhealthiness, but also to a dislike of soap and water. They trained like professionals and made tin gods of their challenge cups. They worked always with a dull, sickening energy: they never had a decent three-quarter among them, but won their matches by working the touch-line and scoring from forward rushes. Yet undoubtedly, despite all their ignorance of the way things should be done, they achieved results.

Of course Berney's hated Randall's bitterly and for ever. But towards the end of term relations became more strained than was usual. To begin with, Randall's had defeated Berney's by thirty-five points to three in the first round of the footer pot. Once Spots had romped away, but for the rest of the match the heavy Randallite scrum had kept the ball close and pushed their light opponents all over the field. And Randall's juniors had crowed over their triumph, had hailed every fresh try with much shouting and throwing up of caps (it was generally held that gentlemen showed their joy by reasonable yelling and that only a low soccer crowd would hurl their caps into the air), and behaved as offensively as could be expected. Now Randall's prepared to win the final as though the future of the world rested on their efforts, while Berney's jeered from study windows or the house yard. So Randall's sulked and refused to send back balls which were kicked over into their yard, and Berney's had to scale walls secretly to recover their property. Nor did they always succeed. But the actual cause of open hostilities was the affair of Gideon.

Gideon's real name was Edward Spencer Lewis-Murray. Some reader of Mr Eden Phillpotts had called him Gideon because he was dark and had a large nose. Whether or not he was a Jew is immaterial. Certainly he not only went to school chapel, but consumed ham in large quantities. One day he had been ragged about his nose and straightway he marched to the tuck-shop, ordered an unparalleled amount of ham and pork sausages (for he was wealthy) and devoured the entire feast before a large assembly. His capacity was enormous, and he thus gained two ends at once: he demonstrated his loathing of Jewish practices and established an undoubted record in consumption.

His nose, however, was certainly large, and the name of Gideon clung to him: but he took his ragging sensibly, and, while remaining a butt, he became, in a way, popular. So when, a few days before the end of term, he was shamefully mishandled by some members of Randall's the Berneyites were furious and Gideon became temporarily a martyr and a hero. He had kicked a football into Randall's yard: then, having shouted "Thank you" in vain, he had climbed over the wall to look for it. Shouts of "Gideon," "Berney's Yiddisher," "Jew-beak," "Back to Joppa you dirty Jew-ew," and lastly a great roar of "Stone the dirty Semite" had been heard. And Gideon had not returned. He had, it turned out, been ceremoniously stoned—that is to say, he had been lashed to a pillar in Randall's house gym, and pounded with footballs thrown hard from a distance of five yards. Then he had been stripped and thoroughly washed in cold water: they had, he said, made jokes about Jordan and total immersion. He reappeared just before tea, raging and very battered. All through the meal his nose bled profusely and it was a sign of the times that no one made jokes, the old, inevitable jokes, about Gideon's 'konk.'

Berney's discussed the affair with animation. Jew or no Jew, Gideon was of Berney's and as such he deserved respectful treatment. The workroom seethed with wrath and Gideon revelled in hospitalities hitherto undreamed of. Even Cullen and Neave stooped from their heights and actually led the wail of sympathy.

"The swine," said Neave. "Forty of 'em lamming into one poor devil."

"Jaundiced Bible-bangers," said Cullen. "I suppose they're praying now for that mangy pot."

It was a traditional jest that Randall's had house prayers before cup matches to invoke heavenly aid for their team.

"Let's hope Smith puts it across them."

There was a chorus of approval.

"My sainted aunt," Neave went on. "Can't we do something?"

"What?"

"Can't we avenge our Gideon?"

It was then that Martin, standing timidly on the outskirts of the crowd and drinking in every word of the great ones, remarked boldly:

"For Gideon and the Lord."

He raised a roar of laughter. The school had been working at Judges that term in divinity and the story of Gideon was familiar to all. Martin's allusion to the Israelites' act of revenge was distinctly opportune. The ringing of the prep bell abruptly ended the conversation.

On the following day Randall's put it across Smith's, scoring twenty-eight points to nil. Again the victory was due to forward rushes.

"Not a decent movement in the match," said Spots angrily to Martin. "It's scandalous that the pot can be won by a pack of well-drilled louts."

Randall's began to stink in the nostrils of the whole school, for their elation at their successes was always characteristic. They revelled with a serious, unconvincing revelry. Other houses always celebrated the occasion by demanding and obtaining ices (in mid-December) at the school tuck-shop: it was a tradition and a noble one. Randall's gorged themselves with lumps of bread and ham.

Martin happened to walk back to Berney's just behind Cullen and Neave. He would not have spoken to them had they not turned and addressed him. It was condescension, and he appreciated it.

"Hullo," said Cullen. "What about old Gideon?"

"I don't know," answered Martin. "Can't anything be done."

"Possibly. Do you remember what you said last night?"

"For Gideon and the Lord?"

"Yes."

"What about it?"

"We'll let you know in dormy to-night."

"Good. That's ripping."

Proceedings in the lower dormy that evening were unusual. Silence was called and then Neave read from the book of Judges:

"And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the torches in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal: and they cried, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon."

Then he continued: "That, my brethren, is the text. And what is its lesson for us here in a community such as ours?" There was a laugh, for he was beautifully constructing a lay sermon on Foskett's lines. "Only to avenge our Gideon very mightily with pitchers. To-morrow night, as you may know, is the last night of term and our brothers next door" (Cries of "Swine" and counter-cries of "Order") "will hold a supper to celebrate their triumph in the playing-field. Now it is a good tradition of the Public Schools and a byword among clean-living Englishmen" (Laughter, for it was sheer Foskett) "that we do pass the last night of term in what my form master would call—thorubos. A Greek word, O Stinkers of the Modern Side. My brothers, it is up to us to infect Randall's with thorubos or disorder. (Cheers and a voice, "What about pitchers?")."

"Ah, my young friend, you hit the nail on its head. As everybody knows, to get on to Randall's gym is as easy as falling downstairs. From there you can get to the fire ladders and up to Randall's dormies. To-morrow night it is proposed to invade the dormies while the whole house gorges below and listens to slush about their pestilential pots. Meanwhile we snitch their water jugs and empty the water on their little beds. Then we bring the jugs back here and wait. The windows on this side of the dormy look out on the zinc roof of Randall's gym: beyond is the dining-room, where the swine will be guzzling. With windows open we can easily hear what's going on. When old Toffee Randall gets up to propose his blighted house" (Neave had in his excitement sunk from the level of the lay sermon) "I move that we chuck all the empty jugs on that zinc roof and shout: 'For Gideon and the Lord.' There ought to be row enough to raise hell. You know what those roofs are ... and there will be forty pitchers. They won't have the least notion what the row is till they get upstairs and see their beds. They'll think it's a private rag of our own, but they'll learn in due time. Now don't anyone say a word. We've got to keep this to our dormy or the pre's are bound to find out."

The hurried arrival of Spots, followed by the extinction of the lights, put an end to further devising of conspiracy. For a long time Martin lay awake, gazing at the ceiling and turning restlessly from side to side. Excitement, that terrible mingling of sheer joy and sheer terror, gripped him, almost physically: as he thought of the splendours and the perils of to-morrow night he felt as he had felt before when he was walking down the study passage to the prefects' common-room and listening to Spots's following tread. What, he wondered, would be the end of it all? There would be a row, inevitably. They might even be kept back a day: that would be wretched. But swiping? He could endure that for the glory of sharing in a rag, a colossal rag with Neave and Cullen as leaders. Besides he hated Randall's, hated them so bitterly that the prospect of soaking their beds and smashing their pitchers was heavenly even at the cost of swipings innumerable. Nowhere is group feeling more obvious and more powerful than in the world of youth. In a single term Martin had become so passionately one of Berney's that his hatred of Randall's and their smudgy type of success made him quiver with anger. He didn't care a straw for Gideon's nose: nobody really cared for Gideon's sufferings. They were all linked by the single bond of hatred.

It was Randall's that mattered ... the swine.

Naturally the last night of term was not distinguished for its discipline. There was, of course, no prep, and the dormitories were open for packing. Consequently it was not difficult for twelve members of the lower dormy to creep out when Randall's had settled down to their gorge and to range themselves along the gym roof. It was beautifully dark and dry: fortune was helping the cause of Gideon and the right. Neave and Cullen were to ascend the fire-escape and enter Randall's two dormies, one taking each. They were to go through the cubicles, removing the jugs, soaking the beds, and handing out the empty pitchers to others who passed them quietly down a line of waiting figures. This seemed the best, the quietest method of transport. Ultimately all the jugs would be awaiting in Berney's lower dormy the great moment of Toffee Randall's speech. Martin formed one of the hidden line and shivered for half-an-hour on the roof of Randall's gym while he passed jugs carefully along. Never in all his life had he known a night like this. He was thrilled by the sense of comradeship in danger and the knowledge that he was working in the company of great ones, working for the pain and humiliation of Randall's. Never did he forget the supreme exhilaration of that night attack: the climbing in the dark, the whispers, the nervous strain, the dread of blundering and betraying his party, the intolerable waiting. Each movement of the trees in Randall's garden made him think that the conspirators had been noticed and that someone was coming.

At length every bed had been duly drenched and forty pitchers had been silently transferred to Berney's lower dormy. Each member of the dormitory took two jugs, and four of them had three. Then they waited. They could see down into the lighted windows of Randall's dining-hall where the enemy feasted; but the supper was drawing to its end. By the resounding chorus of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" they knew that Toffee Randall was "up" for the last speech of the evening. When the singing and cheering were over Randall began his oration. At the same moment Neave gave the signal. Everyone in Berney's lower dormy cried aloud, "For Gideon and the Lord," and, as they cried, forty pitchers crashed on the zinc roof of Randall's gymnasium. No one, not even the manipulators of three jugs, had failed or been late. There was but one cry and one crash: and there on the zinc roof lay myriad morsels of china, glittering in the half light thrown from the windows of either house. The noise had been terrific, the effect stupendous.

It was in the true spirit of the saga.

A moment later Spots dashed into the room. "What the devil's all that row?" he roared.

Everyone was peacefully in his cubicle, putting the last touch to his packing or getting into bed.

"Randall's trying to be funny," suggested Neave.

"But didn't you shout?"

"Well, we helped a bit. That din would have made anyone squeal. Randall's must have been breaking china for the sake of their dirty pot. They are swine."

Spots looked baffled. The row had been tremendous, yet here everybody was calm and quiet. It must have been Randall's, but they were still at their supper. It was amazing, it was a miracle. To save his face he returned to his study.

Meanwhile it was ascertained that, after some confusion, Toffee Randall had continued his speech: then they heard the long-drawn, surging roar of "Auld Lang Syne." It took Randall's twenty minutes to finish "Auld Lang Syne."

"The swine," said Neave. He said it often, but he said it beautifully, with a whining drawl of contempt. "Just wait till they get to their dormies."

So they waited, and presently the pandemonium began. Randall's were discovering that not a bed had escaped, not a jug remained. As they looked out of their windows on to the gym roof they realised the full meaning of the battle-cry and the crash that had startled them at their supper.

"Water, water everywhere," cried Cullen in ecstasy as he heard the tumult rising in the neighbouring house. Randall's, flushed rather with insolence than the weak claret-cup of their supper, bellowed in their dormitories and shouted from their windows: after all none but Berney's could have done the deed. It was sheer joy for Berney's as they listened: wisely they made no answer and Randall's cried aloud in vain.

Again Spots came into the lower dormy. "What are Randall's shouting about?" he asked.

"Joy of life," said Neave. "The swine."

"Well they needn't yell at us."

"They've got no manners, Leopard."

Spots advised his dormy to take no notice of the creatures and again went out.

Shortly before midnight Mr Randall rang at Mr Berney's front door and demanded an interview with the master of the house. Berney came down in his dressing-gown: he was very tired and his eyes ached. He was promptly informed by his raging neighbour that his house had disgraced itself, and he listened to a strange story of soaked beds and broken pitchers. "Must have been your boys," Randall ended fiercely. "The jugs couldn't be thrown on to my gym except from your dormitories. There has been an invasion. It's scandalous."

"But what evidence have you?" asked Berney, who hated Randall as only one housemaster can hate another.

"It's obvious, man, obvious. Jealousy. Footer cup. My boys were at supper when the crash was heard: and your boys shouted, I heard them. Besides, would my people soak their beds? I demand an inquiry. I shall go to Foskett. Your boys shall be kept back a day."

This roused Berney, whose nerves were already strained with fatigue and worry.

"I entirely decline," he said sharply, "to board my boys for an extra day to please you. I shall put the matter in the hands of my prefects. If that doesn't satisfy you, go to Foskett by all means. You won't get much out of him at this time of night: he's probably more tired than I am. If my prefects find that my boys——"

"There's no 'if,'" said Randall.

"If they find that we're responsible," Berney continued icily, "the jugs shall be paid for and the guilty punished. Good-night." And he led Randall to the door.

Randall was renowned for his temper and his powers of self-expression in school. But now he was sublimely speechless.

Berney held a nocturnal consultation with his form prefects. They all smiled as the tale was told. Spots even roared with laughter.

"Er, Leopard," said Berney, "this is—er—a serious matter," and then he broke down and laughed himself. He and Randall had never hit it off. Spots told Berney of the suspicious innocence of the lower dormitory. Moore had been on duty all the evening in the upper room so that its inhabitants were certainly not guilty. The prefects marched in a body to the lower dormy. "Look here, you chaps," said Spots, "it's all up about this jug business. It was done here. Who are the culprits?"

Simultaneously every boy left his cubicle and said: 'Guilty.' It was a triumph of organisation. Neave had foreseen that detection was inevitable and had determined that, up to the very end, the dormy should display its solidarity.

"Well," said Spots, "you'd better all come down to the pre's room."

So shortly before one o'clock eighteen boys in dressing-gowns, led by Cullen and Neave in garments of great colour and splendour, went down to the prefects' common-room. There was just room for all.

Neave had to tell the whole story: he told it simply and well, duly emphasising the Biblical aspect.

"Berney has left the matter with the prefect," said Moore, who was suffering tortures from a half-thwarted desire to laugh.

"You'll have to pay for the jugs next term. Randall wants you to be kept back, but Berney wouldn't hear it. Anyhow, it's been a grave breach of discipline" (here he saw the impenetrable solemnity of Neave's face and almost broke down), "grave breach of discipline. Yes. You're to have four each."

Martin sighed with relief, for he had expected eight. They were taken to the house gym, where space was ample, and with all four prefects at work the business was soon over. They were even allowed to keep on their dressing-gowns. Never had swiping been so farcical or so inefficient. When they were all back in their cubicles Spots came in.

"I'd have given a great deal," he said, "not to have been a pre to-night. It seems to me that we have scored off Randall's. Gentlemen, I congratulate you, and I sincerely hope that no one has been hurt by our recent ministration."

They assured him that they had not suffered. And then, because they were all going away very early the next morning, it was decided, with Spots's permission, to abandon sleep. Gideon had to make a speech and offer thanks for the public revenge: and stories were told interminably.

Martin, as he lay half asleep, came to the conclusion that life's burden was exquisite. It wasn't only that the holidays began to-morrow: the night's achievement had been perfect. There is something essentially satisfying to human nature in the lavish destruction of property: with joy we watch the havoc wrought by the cinema comedian or the pantomime knockabout, and with joy the patron of fairs smashes the bottles in a rifle-range. Martin revelled in the thought that forty pitchers lay shattered and shimmering on the zinc roof below him. And now, more than ever, he felt the pleasures of comradeship. Randall's had been humiliated: Berney's had triumphed. It was for him far the most significant fact of his first term that he had taken part in an enterprise worthy to be recounted for ever in Berney's. He was proud of his dormy, for it had worked as one man. Above all, he was proud of Neave, the contriver, the leader of men. Even now he was saying:

"We've put it across them, the swine."

Then Spots said: "For Gideon and the Lord. It was a great notion. Who thought of it?"

"Young Leigh gave the name," said Neave.

"Good for you, Leigh," shouted Spots. "You're keeping up the reputation of the Leopard's den."

Naturally that seemed to Martin the supreme moment of the whole superb affair.

VI

At one o'clock in the afternoon of December the twentieth a motor car left Tavistock station and tore fiercely westward until it reached the excellent village of Cherton Widger. Then it panted up an abrupt hill and, passing a lodge, ran up a short drive to The Steading, a square low-roofed house surrounded by irreproachable lawns that sloped away to the coverts. The chauffeur descended and carried on to the steps a portmanteau and a corded play-box. Martin, looking uncouthly smart in a new overcoat (with a strap behind) and a bowler hat, stood rather nervously by the door. He had come home for the holidays.

In the hall he met his aunt. He kissed her: or rather she kissed him. His uncle burst out of his study and shook hands with him: his cousin Margaret, aged fifteen, also appeared and shyly shook hands. It seemed that his cousin Robert, aged seventeen, would not escape from Rugby till to-morrow. Everybody began to ask him questions which he mechanically answered.

"You must have left Elfrey very early," said his aunt.

"About seven."

"And in December too! Had you got to?"

"No; but everybody does."

These well-meaning people did not realise that you do not stay at school after term has ended. Though you perish with cold and lack of sleep, the first possible train is the only train. Martin had secured an hour's sleep, breakfasted at six, and caught his train at seven. All the way to Exeter he had smoked. About this smoking he had felt afraid, for here was another new experience: but everyone else in the carriage had smoked and there was no escape. One of the boys had dealt in cigars, another produced a pipe which he cleaned extensively and smoked but little. Martin had kept with the majority to cigarettes and had laboured to disguise the swift nervous action of the novice beneath the languid air of the connoisseur. One thing at any rate was certain: he had not been sick. By the time he reached Exeter he was feeling a little queer, but with a supreme effort he had staved off a disaster which would have been fatal to his reputation. And now he was intensely hungry and found cold chicken and ham a very pleasant substitute for the 'roast or boiled' with which the board of Berney's was laden. It was heavenly to sit once more in a comfortable chair in a fire-warmed room and to have chicken and fresh bread and lemonade.

Martin was an orphan. His guardian, John Berrisford, to whose house he had just come, was his mother's brother. His father had been most things to most men, and despite, or possibly because of, his very considerable ability he had achieved a rich versatility in failure. He had started by being a captain of industry, or perhaps a sub-lieutenant would be a more accurate description; but his complete inability to remain awake in the office between the hours of two and four had put a sudden end to his commission. On parting from his general he had said:

"It's no use your getting chaps from the varsity to give the show tone. They won't work till they have had their tea." The general had sworn and taken his advice.

Richard Leigh then discovered that he had been so damnably well educated that there was nothing for him to do but think. So he thought and wrote and went hungry. Now and then, to give his creditors a run for their money, he became a commission agent or an architect or a producer of plays. But he never paid very much in the pound. At the time when he met Joan Berrisford, a young woman of property, he was once more engaged in thought. She was beginning to feel the need of permanence in her life and was quickly interested in his work and the giant despair which he swore was the greatest of his creations. Virginity bored her: Richard attracted her: possibly her conscience stung her: for she was suddenly struck by the idea that she might repay society for her dividends by rescuing for society an artist whom it didn't want. Nowadays this would seem reasonable enough, because we don't believe in democracy any longer and shower divine rights on anyone who chooses to call himself an intelligent minority and make himself sufficiently objectionable: but at the time when the incident occurred Joan Berrisford was certainly thinking in advance of her age. Everybody said she was a fool to pay any attention to the creature, for she came of the class that thinks every artist has necessarily something wrong with him. Only her brother John pointed out that Joan's husband was, primarily, Joan's affair, and then, to her intense delight, he had added that he didn't care twopence whom she married as long as the rest of the family hated him.

The marriage was a success. Richard threw off his despair and gave society some excellent books of which it took no notice. They lived in Italy, and there Martin was born. When he was only eight his mother died suddenly and his father came to London. He had been left comfortably off by his wife, but after her death the old restlessness returned: he gave up writing and gambled gracefully on the Stock Exchange—that is to say, he bore his continual losses with an exquisite nonchalance. Martin used to go to a day school and was enabled by his brains and some sound teaching to win a good scholarship at Elfrey. Then in August his father had succumbed to a long illness and the boy was left to the guardianship of his uncle, John Berrisford, to whom Richard Leigh had written the following letter:

DEAR JOHN, You are the only one of my relations by blood or marriage with whom neither Joan nor I ever quarrelled. And so, just because you left us alone, I can't leave you alone. I want you to be Martin's guardian, in case this illness should do for me: you have seen something of him and I know you like him. There is no home in the world to which I would sooner entrust my son than yours. I have only a thousand pounds and I want him to be decently educated. You have a family and I should hate to think that I was burdening you. So you must just go for the capital: he has a good scholarship at Elfrey and ought to get one at Oxford. In that case the thousand pounds ought just to see him through. It's plainly no use investing for fifty pounds a year. Don't encourage him to be an artist: he can't afford it. Besides it's a poor life to be a wanderer when you're old, and that's what he would be without money. If he seems inclined for safety and the Civil Service, let him take his chance. Anyhow I trust you absolutely. Yours ever,

RICHARD LEIGH.

So Martin had spent the last three weeks of his summer holiday at The Steading and thither he had now returned.

John Berrisford was a round, ruddy little man who was too English to be like Napoleon and too Napoleonic to be like an English squire. In all matters of theory, especially moral and political, he was fiercely progressive, in all matters of taste a conservative. He combined revolutionary fervour with a strong belief in old customs, old cheese, and old wine. He ran a small estate on which he gave his labourers a twenty-shilling minimum, decent cottages, and free beer on festal occasions, and to the grief of the neighbouring farmers he made it pay. Sport of all kinds attracted him, and on Saturdays in the autumn and winter he would bring down partridges and pheasants with remarkable certainty, but he was sufficiently logical not to cap his battues by going to church on the following day. He made friends with everybody and was criticised by the squires for being a rebel and by the rebels, of whom the village had two, for being a squire. This amused him intensely and his first answer to all criticism was a drink. Then he would start out magnificently to justify his position. "I get the best of everything," he said, and meant it.

Martin, of course, missed his father's companionship: they had lived on very intimate terms and the customary limitations of the parental relationship had been broken through. But it is the privilege of youth to forget easily, and it was fortunate for Martin that almost directly after his father's death he should have been plunged into a new world, a world whose thronging cares and pleasures gave few moments for reflection. By the time he had returned to The Steading his personality had so grown and developed that he was freed from painful memories and able to enjoy his holidays.

The Berrisfords were people of sound sense, and seeing what manner of boy he was made no effort to entertain him. Robert, the son at Rugby, was seventeen and a prefect, so that Martin was afraid of him and kept aloof: of Margaret, as a girl, he was naturally shy. He preferred to wander alone in the fields and coverts, now marking the ways of bird and beast, now plotting out his future and building up strange fantasies of thought. Ever since he had been a tiny boy he had played with himself a game of imagination in which he fused his personality with that of a mysterious hero called Daniel. Always when he got into bed he would become Daniel until he fell asleep and in imagination he would go through great adventures and sufferings and triumphs. Daniel was very strong and brave and perfect: perhaps Martin had been influenced by Henty's heroes. Daniel's life varied with Martin's own vicissitudes. When Martin read Ballantyne, Daniel was the son of a trapper and wrought wonderful deeds among the Esquimaux and Redskins on the shores of Hudson's Bay: when Martin was under his father's influence he abandoned trapping and came home to write wonderful books about grizzly bears: when Martin's thoughts were centred on his preparatory school, Daniel had laboured at the verbs in [Greek: -mi] and been the finest athlete in the land. At Elfrey, Daniel had suffered an eclipse, as always happened when Martin had anything very much to think about: at Berney's he had either been tired enough to fall asleep immediately or else he had had something on his mind, to-morrow's repetition, an order of Leopard's, or a game of football. And, besides, Martin had reflected that such methods of amusement as the 'Daniel game' were childish and quite incompatible with the dignity of a Public School boy. But at The Steading the temptation to restore Daniel to life became very urgent and Martin at length swallowed his scruples. While he lay in his bed or wandered in the woods he would become Daniel once more, a Daniel at Elfrey, a prodigious Daniel, who surpassed all records in popularity, played stand-off half for the school at the age of fourteen, endured the most tremendous swipings without a moan or a movement, and was irresistible at every game he took up.

Mrs Berrisford was somewhat distressed by Martin's solitary walks and quiet ways and made several efforts to draw him from his shell. But she made the mistake of trying to base the conversation on his experiences at school and the result was not encouraging.

"And who is your form master?" she began one evening.

"Chap called Vickers."

"Is he nice?"

"Oh, he's all right. Bit of a terror sometimes."

"Does he go for you?"

"Not for me very much."

A pause. "And what's Mr Berney like? Do you get on with him?"

"Oh, he's all right."

"Do you like the house?"

"Yes; it's quite all right."

"Have you any special friends?"

"No one in particular. I like most of the chaps."

"How do you get on with football?"

"Fairly well."

And then she gave it up. Without being openly rude Martin had made it plain that he was not to be bolted from his earth of modified optimism.