French was equally hopeless: once a week we prepared a couple of pages of some French history for the headmaster. Whatever French he knew he certainly did not impart: of the spoken language I had picked up enough abroad to be aware that he would have been practically unintelligible to a Frenchman. I believe that both these subjects were admirably taught on the modern side; on the classical side the study of them was a mere farce. But at Latin and Greek we worked quite reasonably and intelligently: it was “good form” to take an interest in them, and it was not thought the least odd if somebody was found reading the _Apology of Socrates_ (in a translation) out of school hours, though it had nothing to do with class-work, or that I treasured a piece of white marble which my sister Nellie on a foreign tour had picked up on the Acropolis. The real interest of life centred in “the Alley,” a passage running above a couple of classrooms in the school buildings, out of which on each side opened minute studies inhabited by sixth-form in-college boys. Some of these were double studies shared by two occupants, but most were single; inviolable castles if the owner chose to shut the door. Inside there was room for a table, a hanging bookcase, and perhaps three chairs if you sat close; but who would dream of measuring Paradise by cubic contents? Never surely was there a more harmonious democracy, and it was seldom that doors were shut; the inhabitants, unless tied to their books, drifted up and down and round and round like excited bubbles in some loquacious backwater. Within the limits of “good form” every freedom of action and opinion was allowed, and those limits were really very reasonable ones. It must not be supposed that “good form” was ever discussed at all: it was merely the unwritten, unspoken code, which held things together, and undoubtedly the gravest offense against it was a hint of condescension or superiority. If you were so fortunate as to get into the school fifteen or achieve any distinction, “the Alley” pooled the credit, and woe be to any who showed “side” to the Alleyites. If you liked (hardly anybody did) to be extremely neat in dress, to get yourself up to kill, to wear buttonholes, you were perfectly at liberty to do so; but if you showed the least “swank” over your rosebud, the witnesses of your enormity would probably stroll thoughtfully away and return embellished with dandelions and groundsel. That was sarcasm, popularly called “sarc,” and was a weapon ruthlessly employed towards the superior person. No one could stand a conspiracy of “sarc” for long: it was better to mend your ways and reduce your swollen head. Only one member of the Alley was ever known to resist a continual course of “sarc,” and he, poor fellow, was goaded by the shafts of love, for he adored to distraction one of the masters’ daughters who appeared unaware of his existence. This was unusual conduct, but he was at liberty to