Inevitably Martin worshipped Spots. The study became to him a temple, a very awful and a sacred place. On its walls were scores of photographs, signed pictures of school bloods past and present, photographs of elevens, photographs of fifteens, photographs of the Racket Pair, and photographs of a girl, who was usually on horseback. These last were carefully framed and signed in round, sprawling letters, 'Kiddie.' Martin, as he gazed upon them, began to form conceptions of the perfect life. There was a bookcase, too, with a fine collection of shilling novels whose paper covers bore lurid pictures of Life and Love. In spite of a certain monotony of theme and a devastating dullness in its elaboration, Spots seemed to derive considerable pleasure from those works, which he always read while Martin was doing his Greek prose. Martin was kept too busy to do much reading, but he appreciated the pictures on the covers and was impressed by the dark-eyed women in red who accepted on divans the passionate kisses of blond young men in faultless evening dress. The room also contained some old swords (bought from a predecessor), a number of rackets, a bag of golf-clubs, and a fine array of cushions with humorous designs. The culinary outfit and china were complete to the verge of opulence. The Leopard's Den, as the study was commonly called, had achieved a certain reputation for magnificence, a reputation in which Martin gloried. He even enjoyed the dusting and cleaning and despised Pearson for his laziness and lack of proper pride. But it was not mere priggishness that animated him. Meanwhile Mrs Berney had not forgotten his possibilities, and it was arranged that he should attend her poetry circle which met after prayers on Saturday evenings. It was composed mainly of older boys, and two of them were vast intellectuals in the Upper Sixth, so that Martin felt very awed at the prospect of reading Keats amid such company. One of them was actually the school poet and had lately worked off in _The Elfreyan_ the emotions evoked by a summer holiday in the Lakes: "The flaming bracken fires the breast Of bosky Borrowdale, Down swoops the sun in a riot of red Behind Scawfell to a watery bed, And the moon hath clomb o'er Skiddaw's head, So perfect and so pale." Martin, who had also been in the Lakes, thought this rather good and much better than Wordsworth. He was still a Tennysonian and connected poetry with the lavish use of alliteration and words like 'clomb' and 'bosky.' The thought that on the next Saturday evening he was to read in the company of such an one was as terrifying as it was inspiring. But it was not yet to be.