The discipline of the establishment was managed on the same lines as the teaching. During play-time, no boy was allowed within a radius of half a mile from the school, with the result that no boy ever strayed outside it. All games were forbidden, and were played enthusiastically. You were liable to be flogged if you were found in bed before ten: the masters, creeping in on tip-toe, used to find all their pupils fast asleep by half-past nine. Cigarettes were served out after all meals, and were secretly thrown away by the boys, who complained of them in their letters home as “filthy muck.” Very plain food was served to the masters; but as the masters never came into the dining-room till a quarter of an hour after the boys, this plain food had all disappeared by the time they arrived, and they regaled themselves later on with the masterpieces of a French _chef_, which the boys had contemptuously thrown under their seats. The passages were wrapped in a cloistral stillness; if any master heard so much as a whisper there, he would come out and say, “Make more noise there, please,” and all would be quiet once more. There was a large bath-room labelled “For the use of Masters only,” from which sounds of splashing came all day long. If two boys quarrelled, they were ordered to fight, and they immediately settled their differences by arbitration. I am glad to say that my own boys got very bad reports all the time they were there. Again and again they were “swished” for going into the Chapel, tidying their desks, opening their windows at night, wearing black clothes on Sunday, touching their caps to masters, doing Swedish drill before breakfast, taking books out of the classical library, keeping silence in the dormitory, and otherwise breaking the rules of the establishment. Once they very nearly got expelled for deliberately mowing the lawn. It was a wonderful school. I am bound to say, on the other hand, that they paid their pupils very little,[12] but high fees were an advantage which Porstock and I could easily afford to forego. It was just before Francis went to Eton that I lost my dear mother. Her health had been failing for some time, and she had been obliged to go to the Campagna, Sierra Leone and other health resorts under doctor’s orders, but it was plain that she could not last long, and she came back to Greylands to end her life quietly there. Towards the end her memory failed rather, and she would think she was back in her childhood’s days: she would walk upstairs without taking any notice of the lift, or take a pen out of some old drawer and absent-mindedly begin writing her letters by hand. Her end was a very peaceful one, and Mrs. Rowlands, who attended her in her last illness, said she had never met such touching faith. Our friends were very kind to me in my great sorrow, and two Cabinet Ministers flew back behind her ashes from Golder’s Green to West Mill.