Yet, of all things, that which remained clearest in his memory was one day early in the term, when he and Lovelace were recovering from chicken-pox. The school had gone for a field day to Salisbury, and they were left behind with Archie Fletcher, who had been ragging Jenks, and had been kept back for punishment, and a quantity of small fry. No work was done. In the morning they all had to go into the big schoolroom and hear Claremont read _Lycidas_ and parts of _Comus_. Claremont read remarkably well, and Gordon, in an atmosphere of genial tolerance and good humour, was able to get a clearer insight into the real soul of the pedant of the Lower Fifth. For, shorn of his trappings, Claremont was "a dear old fellow." Among books he had found the lasting friendship and consolation that among his colleagues he had sought in vain. And as he read _Comus_, in many ways the most truly poetical poem in the English language, Gordon realised how sensitively Claremont's heart was wrought upon by every breath of beauty. The afternoon they had to themselves. A net was put up on the field, and for an hour or so they beat about, regardless of science and footwork. A relaxation was a good thing now and again. Then they went back to the studies, and in the absence of its owner laid hold of the games study. They had the run of it now, and, with an enormous basket of strawberries before them, played tunes on the gramophone and roared the chorus. As the evening fell, and the lights began to wake, Gordon and Archie stole down to the fried fish shop, strictly out of bounds, and returned with an unsavoury, but none the less palatable, parcel of fried fish and chips. It was a glorious day; they enjoyed all Fernhurst's privileges with its restrictions removed, and when the notes of _Land of Hope and Glory_ proclaimed that the corps was marching up Cheap Street, they considered the return to realities to be almost an intrusion on their isolated peace.