In the art prospectus, printed on a glazed paper with many choice illustrations, Chawley School was a perfect place. The school, once a manor, celebrated for its architectural beauty, was situated in a magnificent park of five acres, with an ornamental lake and a drive one mile long. The gardens in front of the house were extensive and well kept. One of the illustrations showed fifty small boys, all dressed alike, in grey shorts and blue flannel jackets, with grey socks with red tops, and straw hats with red bands, squatted on the splendid lawn, all showing bended bare knees and round happy faces. In their midst were three masters, one middle-aged and two quite young, and a lady. The letterpress under this charming picture of sunlit foliage and smiling humanity, said "Afternoon Tea." The prospectus also mentioned the covered swimming pool in the grounds, the boys' own garden, the large airy dormitories and class rooms. It then drew rapturous attention to the staff. The school was run by the Rev. Shayle Tobin, M.A., Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, with a double first, a blue for cricket, and for some years famous as a half-back. One Sunday morning, six head boys, conscious of leadership and the great world of a public school approaching, shuffled their feet in the Manor pew in the village church. Behind them in other pews sat other little boys, more angelic in appearance and devilish in action. They were all dressed alike, in black Eton jackets, white collars, grey trousers and shoes. Even at the tender age of ten to thirteen their faces gave promise or otherwise. The new young assistant master who sat guarding them in the third pew found himself studying, during the dreary sermon, the shapes of the heads ranged in front of him like turnips on a table. There were long heads, round heads, oval, pointed, blunt, flat and dinted. Handsome, well-made, ugly, emaciated, intelligent, stupid, good-natured, deceitful, mischievous and lovable. John Dean ranged up and down the row. This was his first Sunday morning in church. It was his Sunday on duty; the other assistant master had gone into Southampton. The young assistant master was not the only critical person letting his thoughts wander from the Harvest Festival Sermon. John gazed abstractedly at the figure of the Rev. Samuel Piggin, ringed round with bunches of carrots, a few grapes and six tomatoes balanced on the top of a sheaf of wheat, which demonstrated God's bounty, despite a ruinously wet summer and a harvest, half of which lay rotting in the fields.