The Studley masters were not a particularly gregarious body. The Head lived in secluded state with his wife and four daughters in his official residence on the north side of the Close, emerging periodically to overawe the Sixth, preach in Chapel, or discharge a thunderbolt in Big School. The Housemasters dwelt severally in their own strongholds, thanking Heaven that their Houses were not as other Houses were; and the Junior Staff lived roundabout, in cottages and chummeries and snuggeries, throughout Studley Village. But once a week the whole hierarchy foregathered in the Masters' Common Room and dined together. Usually the Head presided in person; and from the soup to the savoury every soul present talked shop. Schoolmasters appear to be quite unique in this respect. For three months on end they live in everlasting contact with boys. Sleepy boys confront them in those grisly hours of school which occur before breakfast. Restless and inattentive boys occupy their undivided attention from breakfast until luncheon. In the afternoon they play games with, or watch games played by, energetic and overheated boys. From four o'clock till six they stimulate the flagging energies of boys who are comfortably tired and inclined to be drowsy. In their spare time they lavish individual pains upon backward boys, or castigate sinful boys, or fraternise with friendly boys, or comfort unhappy boys. At the very end of the day they pray with and for all the boys together. A man who has never been a schoolmaster might be excused for supposing that when this overdriven band desisted from their labours and sat down to their evening meal, they would turn with a sigh of relief to some extraneous and irrelevant topic--politics; literature; sport; scandal, even. But no--they never talk of anything but boys--boys' work, boys' games, boys' pranks, boys' crimes, boys' prospects. They bore one another intensely, these excellent men; for just as no young mother ever desires to hear of or talk about the achievements of any other baby than her own, so no keen cricketing coach will listen with anything but impatience to glowing accounts of his next-door neighbour's protégés. But they never desist. The shop varies, but boy is the only theme. This weakness is not confined to schoolmasters, of course. All bodies of men of the same calling herded together for protracted periods of time are inclined to the habit, but most of them take elaborate precautions to eradicate it. In military and naval circles, for instance, certain subjects are tabu. Even undergraduates mulct one another in pots of beer if the line be crossed. But schoolmasters are incorrigible. They talk boy and nothing else. The explanation is simple. Boys are the most interesting things in the world.