It is possible that if the house-master were taken to task in the privacy of his own study, he might be persuaded to confess himself a pragmatist. 'One has to keep them quiet,' he might say. 'The young rascal'll get on all right as long as they don't start meddling with him.' But it is hard to be honest with oneself. The schoolmaster cannot help regarding the parent in much the same way that the junior subaltern regarded the brigadier. We all know what happened when the runner brought the news that at such an hour the brigadier would visit Lieutenant Jones's gun emplacements. Lieutenant Jones specially called the brigadier's attention to what he knew would please him. He put his smartest men on guard. He assured the brigadier that everything was going quite all right, that the men were perfectly comfortable and that the supply of rations was adequate; Lieutenant Jones did everything, in fact, to get the brigadier into the next trench as soon as possible. Which was, of course, all very rational. The brigadier's interest in Lieutenant Jones's gun emplacements was remote and theoretical, and either way was of small importance. But it is a different thing altogether when house-masters wave parents out of the way with comfortable excuses. It establishes at once a dishonest relationship. The schoolmaster does not trust the parent. He regards him as a nuisance that periodically has to be appeased. And, as long as things go smoothly, he is content to leave him in the dark. There is no co-operation. And that is absolutely fatal. It means that the two people who are chiefly responsible for the boy's welfare are working at cross purposes. The trouble does not end there. For between the parents themselves there is frequently an incomplete mutual appreciation of the difficulties of school life. Women, in the nature of things, can only know about Public Schools what men choose to tell them. That is usually remarkably little. Many a husband encourages in his wife the illusion that before he met her his life was a vague, indeterminate, ineffectual thing, the incidents of which are unworthy to be recorded. And many others on such matters as public school life consider that a lie that saves friction is justifiable. It is so easy to see how it happens.