But he was quite happy. He had always had the ambition to be a master at a public-school. He had dreamed about it; he was dreaming about it now. He was bursting with new ideas and new enthusiasms, which he hoped would be infectious, and Millstead, which was certainly a good school, would doubtless give him his chance. Something in Ervine's dark study had momentarily damped his enthusiasm, but only momentarily; and in any case he was not afraid of an uncomfortable bed or of a poorly-furnished room. When he had been at Millstead a little while he would, he decided, import some furniture from home; it would not, however, be wise to do everything in a hurry. For the immediate present a few photographs on the mantelpiece, Medici prints on the walls, a few cushions, books of course, and his innumerable undergraduate pipes and tobacco-jars, would wreak a sufficiently pleasant transformation. He looked through the open lattice-windows and saw, three storeys below, the headmaster's garden, the running-track, and beyond that the smooth green of the cricket-pitch. Leaning out and turning his head sharply to the left he could see the huge red blocks of Milner's and Lavery's, the two other houses, together with the science buildings and the squat gymnasium. He felt already intimate with them; he anticipated in a sense the peculiar closeness of their relationship with his life. Their very bricks and mortar might, if he let them, become part of his inmost soul. He would walk amongst them secretly and knowingly, familiar with every step and curve of their corridors, growing each day more intimate with them until one day, might be, he should be a part of them as darkly and mysteriously as Ervine had become a part of his study. Would he? He shrank instinctively from such a final absorption of himself. And yet already he was conscious of fascination, of something that would permeate his life subtly and tremendously--that must do so, whether he willed it or not. And as he leaned his head out of the window he felt big cold drops of rain. He shut the windows and resumed unpacking. Just as he had finished everything except the hanging up of some of the pictures, he heard the School clock chime the hour of four. He recollected that the porter had told him that tea could be obtained in the Masters' Common-Room at that hour. It was raining heavily now, so that a walk into the town, even with the lure of old Roman earthworks, was unattractive. Besides, he felt just pleasantly hungry. He washed his hands and descended the four long flights to the ground-floor corridors. III The Masters' Common-Room was empty save for a diminutive man reading the _Farmer and Stockbreeder_. As Speed entered the little man turned round in his chair and looked at him. Speed smiled and said, still with a trace of that almost boisterous nervousness: "I hope I'm not intruding." The little man replied: "Oh, not at all. Come and sit down. Are you having tea?" "Yes."