Poetry and Dick were now the only two things that really mattered. My life with my fellow house-monitors was one of perpetual discord. I had grudges against them all except the house-captain and the head-monitor. The house-captain, the only blood in the house, spent most of his time with his fellow bloods in other houses. The head-monitor was a scholar who, though naturally a decent fellow, had been embittered by his first three years in the house and was much on his dignity. He did more or less what the other monitors wanted him to do, and I was sorry that I had to lump him in with the rest. My love for Dick provoked a constant facetiousness, but they never dared to go too far. I once caught one of them in the bathroom scratching up a pair of hearts conjoined, with Dick’s initials and mine on them. I pushed him into the bath and turned the taps on. The next day he got hold of a manuscript note-book of mine that I had left on the table in the monitors’ room with some other books. It had poems and essay notes in it. He and the other monitors, except the house-captain, annotated it critically in blue chalk and all signed their initials. The house-captain would have nothing to do with this: he thought it ungentlemanly. I was furious when I found what had been done. I made a speech. I demanded a signed apology. I said that if I were not given it within an hour I would choose one of them as solely responsible and punish him. I said that I would now have a bath and that the first monitor that I met after my bath I would knock down. Whether by accident or whether it was that he thought his position made him secure, the first monitor I met in the corridor was the head-monitor. I knocked him down. It was the time of evening preparation, which only the monitors were free not to attend. But a fag happened to pass on an errand and saw the blow and the blood; so it could not be hushed up. The head-monitor went to the house-master and the house-master sent for me. He was an excitable, elderly man who had some difficulty in controlling his spittle when angry. He made me sit down in a chair in his study, then stood over me, clenching his fists and crying in his high falsetto voice: ‘Do you realize you have done a very brutal action?’ His mouth was bubbling. I was as angry as he was. I jumped up and clenched my fists too. Then I said that I would do the same thing to anyone who, after scribbling impertinent remarks on my private papers, refused to apologize. ‘Private papers. Filthy poems,’ said the house-master.