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With the head-master's valediction and the grave elder-brotherliness of old Henson, and the shrill cheers of a little crowd of juniors still echoing in my head, I very naturally came home in a mood of exalted gravity, and I can still remember pacing up and down the oblong lawn behind the rockery and the fig-tree wall with my father, talking of my outlook with all the tremendous savoir faire that was natural to my age, and noting with a secret gratification that our shoulders were now on a level.
All these were lodged in the head-master's house, which was in a pleasant, open part of the town, on the road leading to the race-course, just beyond the well-known Salutation Hotel. Besides these, there were rather a large number of day scholars, I forget how many, perhaps fifty or sixty, and in those days the schoolhouse was a ground floor under the old theatre.
The servant met them at the door, and grinned dreadfully at the crowd. "Won't you catch it, gentlemen! The head-master's gone into school, and is waiting for you; marking you all late, of course." "Gone into school!" repeated Gaunt, haughtily, resenting the familiarity, as well as the information. "What do you mean?"
Outwardly, the New Schools, the Chapel, the Vaughan Library, and the Head-Master's House all wear exactly the same aspect that they bore half a century ago. They have not changed, and the ever-renewed stream of young life flows through the place as joyously as it did fifty years ago. But.... "Oh, the great days in the distance enchanted, Days of fresh air, in the rain and the sun."
No one has ever seen him smile, my mother says, since the death of his son, who was a volunteer in the army: he always keeps the latter's portrait before his eyes, on a little table in the head-master's room.
The fact that the head-master's daughters and several girls, who were friends or relatives of his family, shared many of our lessons, also contributed essentially to soften the manners of the young German savages.
The college was a square brick building, not handsome, but commodious; and in the same enclosure with it were the head-master's house, and a boarding-house in which the assistant-masters lived with the pupils. With that love of grand terms which a new country is apt to evince, the head-master was called "The Principal," and his assistants "Professors."
The week passed, and Buller again went over with Dr Jolliffe to Mr Elliot's house at Penredding, Mr Rabbits this time accompanying him. The frost still held, and the boys went skating. I have said that there was no recognised system of fagging at Weston; yet, when a fellow in the head-master's class told a boy in the lowest form to do anything, why, it so happened that he generally did it.
Besides, it attracted the new head-master's attention to my poetical tastes, for a number of verses had been left by mistake in an exercise-book. He read them, and asked to see the rest.
The morning came which was to launch me into the world, and from which my whole succeeding life has, in many important points, taken its coloring. I lodged in the head-master's house, and had been allowed, from my first entrance, the indulgence of a private room, which I used both as a sleeping-room and as a study.
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