“And our esteemed Head having taken him off maths for this précis-writing--whatever that means!--has turned him into a most objectionable free-lance. He was without any sense of reverence before, and promiscuous cheap fiction--which is all that his type of reading means--aggravates his worst points. When it came to a trial he was simply nowhere.” “Ah, well! Ours is a hard calling--specially if one’s sensitive. Luckily, I’m too fat.” The Reverend John went out to bathe off the Pebble Ridge, girt with a fair linen towel whose red fringe signalled from half a mile away. * * * * * There lurked on summer afternoons, round the fives-court or the gym, certain watchful outcasts who had exhausted their weekly ration of three baths, and who were too well known to Cory the bathman to outface him by swearing that they hadn’t. These came in like sycophantic pups at walk, and when the Reverend John climbed the Pebble Ridge, more than a dozen of them were at his heels, with never a towel among them. One could only bathe off the Ridge with a House Master, but by custom, a dozen details above a certain age, no matter whence recruited, made a “House” for bathing, if any kindly Master chose so to regard them. Beetle led the low, growing reminder: “House! House, sir? We’ve got a House now, Padre.” “Let it be law as it is desired,” boomed the Reverend John. On which word they broke forward, hirpling over the unstable pebbles and stripping as they ran, till, when they touched the sands, they were as naked as God had made them, and as happy as He intended them to be. It was half-flood--dead-smooth, except for the triple line of combers, a mile from wing to wing, that broke evenly with a sound of ripping canvas, while their sleek rear-guards formed up behind. One swam forth, trying to copy the roll, rise, and dig-out of the Reverend John’s side-stroke, and manœuvred to meet them so that they should crash on one’s head, when for an instant one glanced down arched perspectives of beryl, before all broke in fizzy, electric diamonds and the pulse of the main surge slung one towards the beach. From a good comber’s crest one was hove up almost to see Lundy on the horizon. In its long cream-streaked trough, when the top had turned over and gone on, one might be alone in mid-Atlantic. Either way it was divine. Then one capered on the sands till one dried off; retrieved scattered flannels, gave thanks in chorus to the Reverend John, and lazily trailed up to five-o’clock call-over, taken on the lower cricket field. “Eight this week,” said Beetle, and thanked Heaven aloud. “Bathing seems to have sapped your mind,” the Reverend John remarked. “Why did you do so vilely with the Augustans?” “They _are_ vile, Padre. So’s _Lear_.” “The other two did all right, though.” “I expect they’ve been swottin’,” Beetle grinned. “I’ve expected that, too, in my time. But I want to hear about the ‘impassioned Diderot,’ please.”