"'It's a bit late in the term. The exchequer may be low. Here is sixpence for the telegram.' "This time I did blub. Not one man in a million would have thought of the sixpence. As a matter of fact, fourpence-halfpenny was all I had in the world." And so on. His ears--especially his right ear--must be burning all day long. * * * * * Of course all Housemasters are not like this. If you want to hear about the other sort, take up The _Lanchester Tradition_, by Mr. G. F. Bradby, and make the acquaintance of Mr. Chowdler--an individual example of a great type run to seed. And there is Dirty Dick, in _The Hill_. * * * * * When he has fulfilled his allotted span as a Housemaster, our friend retires--not from school-mastering, but from the provision trade. With his hardly-won gains he builds himself a house in the neighbourhood of the school, and lives there in a state of _otium cum dignitate_. He still takes his form: he continues to do so until old age descends upon him, or a new broom at the head of affairs makes a clean sweep of the "permanent" staff. He is mellower now. He no longer washes his hands of all responsibility for the methods of his colleagues, or thanks God that his boys are not as other masters' boys are. He does not altogether enjoy his work in school: he is getting a little deaf, and is inclined to be testy. But teaching is his meat and his drink and his father and his mother. He sticks to it because it holds him to life. Though elderly now, he enjoys many of the pleasures of middle age. For instance, he has usually married late, so his children are still young; and he is therefore spared the pain, which most parents have to suffer, of seeing the brood disperse just when it begins to be needed most. Or perhaps he has been too devoted to his world-wide family of boys to marry at all. In that case he lives alone; but you may be sure that his spare bedroom is seldom empty. No Old Boy ever comes home from abroad without paying a visit to his former Housemaster. Rich, poor, distinguished, or obscure--they all come. They tell him of their adventures; they recall old days; they deplore the present condition of the School and the degeneracy of the Eleven; they fight their own battles over again. They confide in him. They tell him things they would never tell their fathers or their wives. They bring him their ambitions, and their failures--not their successes; those are for others to speak of--even their love-affairs. And he listens to them all, and advises them all, this very tender and very wise old Ulysses. To him they are but boys still, and he would not have them otherwise. "The heart of a Boy in the body of a Man," he says--"that is a combination which can never go wrong. If I have succeeded in effecting that combination in a single instance, then I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain." CHAPTER THREE SOME FORM-MASTERS NUMBER ONE THE NOVICE