In that easy, smiling fashion that he had developed from his earliest days as the surest protection for his own security and ease, he arranged everything around him to assure his tranquillity. Everything was not as yet arranged; it might take him six months, a year, two years for that arrangement...but he knew now that it would be done. The second element in his comfort, his love of intrigue, would be satisfied here simply because everything was not, as yet, as he would have it. He would have hated to have tumbled into the place and found it just as he required it. He liked to have things to move, to adjust, to arrange, just as when he entered a room he always, if he had the power, at once altered the chairs, the cushions. It was towards this final adjustment that his power of intrigue always worked. Once everything was adjusted he sank back luxuriously and surveyed it--and then, in all probability, was quickly tired of it and looked for new fields to conquer. He could not remember a time when he had not been impelled to alter things for his comfort. He did not wish to be selfish about this, he was quite willing for every one else to do the same--indeed, he watched them with geniality and wondered why on earth they didn't. As a small boy at Harrow he had, with an imperturbable smile and a sense of humour that, in spite of his rotund youth and a general sense amongst his elders that he was "cheeky," won him popularity, worked always for his own comfort. He secured it and, first as fag and afterwards as House-prefect, finally as School-prefect, did exactly what he wanted with everybody. He did it by being, quite frankly, all things to all men, although never with sycophancy nor apparent falseness. He amused the bored, was confidential with the wicked, upright with the upright, and sympathetic with the unfortunate. He was quite genuine in all these things. He was deeply interested in humanity, not for humanity's sake but his own. He bore no man any grudge, but if any one was in his way he worked hard until they were elsewhere. That removal attained, he wished them all the luck in the world.