One day more to the end of the term. How nice it will be to be back, to start life again for a day or two. The holidays are disgustingly short, though, only three weeks and a bit. We have just given our third and last performance of the marionette play. It has been a wild success and should, if possible, be repeated. But the light in the summer would be too strong and everyone leaves at the end of next summer, so I don’t suppose we shall have enough people to get one up next winter! Oh, for to-morrow to go quickly. Holidays: 10 April. Back again to peace, even if it is cotton wool and stagnation, but very pleasant all the same. Am reading George Moore’s _Ave_, with considerable relish and amusement. He is so very witty. My reports have come in and are uninteresting; no one very enthusiastic, which is not to be wondered at. 20 April. “Polygamy is a matter of opinion, not of morality.” Montague Glass is undoubtedly the greatest comedian of letters. _Potash and Perlmutter_ is superb. At dinner to-night Mamma informed me in one of her rare pronouncements on myself, that I always kept people at arm’s length. It sounds an awful thing to write, but I seldom meet anyone who interests me more than myself: my own fault, I suppose. We have acquired a gramophone, and Strauss’ “Last Waltz” has bewitched me. It is such a lovely thing. NOAT, 4 May. Back to it again: good old Noat, bloody place! Have just seen a book entitled _Up Against it in the Desert_, which sufficiently describes my feelings at the moment. It is so hot as to make writing impossible as my pen and style testify. I shall play no cricket this term, but will just read. I can get off the cricket on the score of health, which becomes increasingly bad. Last holidays we went from doctor to doctor. They look on one as an animal of a certain species, those people, than which nothing is more irritating. 5 May. The weather continues to be quite lovely. I pass the afternoon watching the cricket, with a book. It is the nicest thing to do I know. This evening I went on the river. What is it that is so attractive in the sound of disturbed water? The contrast of sound to appearance, perhaps. Water looks so like a varnished surface that to see it break up, move and sound in moving is infinitely pleasing. Also it is exhilarating to see an unfortunate upset. I must work hard at writing. There are all sorts of writers I have never read; Poe, for instance, the master of the suggestive. I think my general reading is fairly good, but I have such an absurd memory. 2 June. Two portraits of me in the Noat Art Society Summer Exhibition. Not very good, but both striking. * * * * * 29 September.