Mr. Eversley noticed with the keenest pleasure that the letters showed no sign of alienation from the circumstances of thought and habit at home. Gerald manifested all his old interest in the life of Kestercham. He asked many questions, not only about his family, but about the church and its congregations, about the Harvest Thanksgiving Service which was held at the end of October, about the farmers and their affairs, especially about Mr. Seaford’s horses, and whether the village pond had dried up during the drought, and how many sixpences his father (as his custom was) had paid the school children for the discovery and destruction of wasps’ nests. The letters, too, were full and candid in their account of St. Anselm’s. One incident, as this story has shown, Gerald did not relate to his father, and his father was never informed of it. But the common events of daily life, the lessons, the games, the books read in the library, the half-holidays, the meals, the fagging, his place in form, his association with Harry Venniker, ‘the son of Lord Venniker,’ the decoration of their room, their conversation, the names of the masters, of those especially with whom he came into personal contact, Mr. Brandiston’s words and doings, all carefully recorded, were delineated with the simple confidence that, as they were supremely interesting to the writer, so would they equally be to his correspondent. Nor did it surprise Mr. Eversley that Gerald should experience some slight unhappiness in the early days of school life; he looked upon it as a part of the discipline which the children of God are called to endure in the world. But nothing pleased him so much as the spirit in which Gerald spoke of the pleasure that he found in the chapel services, and most of all in Dr. Pearson’s sermons, from which he would sometimes quote passages or phrases. Mr. Eversley did not feel quite so happy about the sermons themselves. They did not appear to be always what he would call ‘Gospel sermons,’ instinct with the sentiments of human depravity, divine redemption, and eternal judgment. But Mr. Eversley hoped for the best.