I have spent a week on my bicycle exploring the surrounding country before term begins. It is glorious to live where people hunt, and there are large houses, and cars passing the door (we are right on the main London-Hastings road) and the villages are all snug and picturesque, and there are heaps of ripping neighbours who call and look as if they were going to entertain us lavishly. It is possible, too, to get down to a real sea, how different from the so-called sea at Radchester, a sea of blue and green flanked by great white Sussex cliffs. I feel most extraordinarily at home and yet I funk the coming term: I don't know how these boys will take to me. They are sure to be very different from the Radchester boys. I doubt whether they'll be as boisterous or as healthy. Time will show. XIV _October 4, 1913_ I have now had my first taste of life as a master at Marlton. The air here is sluggish, warm and unhealthy. I never want to go out and I always feel tired. There is none of the energy which one associated with Radchester. The place is altogether different. In the first place there is practically no Common Room life, which is perhaps a good thing. We only gather in Common Room from 11 to 11.15 every morning for "break." The masters live all over the town. There are eight houses and each one is quite distinct from any other: the boys never mix. Most of the staff are quite young. Of the elder ones I have come across the officer commanding the Corps who is elderly (he has a son older than I am), a parson, very good-natured and easy-going, but with an insatiable desire for talking. He is the most gossipy man I ever met. His wife is one of the sweetest women I ever met. We have dined there once, but it was a dull meal. He monopolized the entire conversation. There is another House-master parson, also old, who is very literary and runs a select society, which meets every Sunday afternoon to read and listen to papers on literary topics. I should like to belong to that. Some day I hope to be elected. We have also dined there. Ponsonby is a wonderful raconteur but rather eccentric in his habits: I should think that he takes some knowing. The other House masters are all young and all married. Every one here seems very well off as compared with the Radchester masters. They all have private means. They ride, though not often, to hounds, they own cars and motor-bicycles, and don't appear to do very much work. Most of them live solely for games. I find that I am getting more and more agitated at the games fetish. Although they live under the shadow of the most inspiring church in the country, and though the school buildings themselves are exceedingly beautiful, the boys and masters alike seem to distrust beauty just as much as the Radchester people did. There is one man with whom I have formed a strong alliance. He, like myself, is a new-comer. He is unmarried, very clever, and deserted the Foreign Office, where he held a good billet,