"But I wonder why everything sounds so sad," Miss Torry asked suddenly one day. "It's always the same, whatever record he puts on. There's always a sound of heartbreak in it, even if it's a comic song." "That's like his character and his eyes," I laughed. "All gaiety and joy in living, but with throbs of heartbreak underneath." Then there were happier hours still when I was going out to dinner and he would superintend my dressing and be particular about the flowers I was going to wear, or throw himself across the foot of the bed and read me French books or old French plays while I brushed my hair. "It's so lovely to get back to London and to you, Big Yeogh Wough. When I've done with school and Oxford, you'll let me live near you always, won't you?" "You won't be able to live near me if you go in for the Indian Civil Service," I reminded him. "And that's more suited to you than anything else, you know." "Then I shall try to be literary and not have anything to do with the Indian Civil Service," he declared, half angrily. "Oh, by the way, as soon as I get back to school I'm going to get rooms for you and father for our Speech Day. They've got to be secured early, or you mayn't get any. Sometimes people take them a year in advance." That first Speech Day, when it did arrive, was a marvellous occasion. He had urged me in half a dozen letters to make great efforts in the direction of clothes, and most of all in the matter of a hat, and as soon as I arrived he anxiously inspected my outfit. "Yes, that's all right," he pronounced, tenderly touching the new lilac frock which I had lifted out of my trunk, and looking admiringly at the plumed black hat that was to be worn with it. "You'll look splendid and I shall be very proud of you." "But you ought to be just as proud of me if I were a frump," I said. "You couldn't be a frump and be my mother," he returned. And to this day I don't know whether this remark was more of a compliment to himself or to me. Just as dance music is sadder than any Dead March ever composed, so youth and gaiety make one think of death more than ever old age does. Really, most of the old people that one knows, and particularly the old men, make one think of anything rather than the grave. They are skittish, frivolous, doing their best to dance upon their crutches and holding on to the good things of this world with a desperate grip which youth never has. That is why youth goes out to fight so readily. But a great Public School, with its army of eager-faced boys and its echoing stones and its clamour of gay voices, not only makes me think of death, but makes even the past ages of the world pass in procession before my terrified eyes. I can see Death walking in the boyish ranks always, mocking at their pink youth with the grisly horror of his grey decay.