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Updated: June 19, 2025
It was Ogden who, on the one occasion when Mr Abney reluctantly resorted to the cane, and administered four mild taps with it, relieved his feelings by going upstairs and breaking all the windows in all the bedrooms. We had some difficult young charges at Sanstead House. Abney's policy of benevolent toleration ensured that. But Ogden Ford stood alone.
It was odd to wake up and realize that I was in London. Years seemed to have passed since I had left it. Time is a thing of emotions, not of hours and minutes, and I had certainly packed a considerable number of emotional moments into my stay at Sanstead House. I lay in bed, reviewing the past, while Smith, with a cheerful clatter of crockery, prepared my breakfast in the next room.
By sheer weight of boredom, Glossop drove me from the house, so that it came about that, at half past nine, the time at which the affair began, I was patrolling the gravel in front of the porch. It was the practice of the staff of Sanstead House School to assemble after dinner in Mr Abney's study for coffee. The room was called the study, but it was really more of a master's common room.
His endeavour to make Sanstead House a place where the delicately nurtured scions of the governing class might feel as little as possible the temporary loss of titled mothers led him into a benevolent tolerance which would have unsettled angels. Success or failure for an assistant-master is, I consider, very much a matter of luck.
I have been in America ever since. I only returned to England a few weeks ago. 'But what brought you to Sanstead? 'Some years ago I got to know Mr Ford, the father of the little boy who is at the school. He recommended me to Mr Abney, who wanted somebody to help with the school. 'And you are dependent on your work? I mean forgive me if I am personal Mr Sheridan did not
I supposed that somebody from one of the big houses in the neighbourhood had called, or, taking the lateness of the hour into consideration, that a motoring party had come, as they did sometimes Sanstead House standing some miles from anywhere in the middle of an intricate system of by-roads to inquire the way to Portsmouth or London. If my class had allowed me, I would have ignored the sound.
It was not late when I started on my way back to the house, but the short January day was over, and it was very dark as I turned in at the big gate of the school and made my way up the drive. The drive at Sanstead House was a fine curving stretch of gravel, about two hundred yards in length, flanked on either side by fir trees and rhododendrons. I stepped out briskly, for it had begun to freeze.
Sanstead House belonged to the more difficult class. Mr Abney's constant flittings did much to add to the burdens of his assistants, and his peculiar reverence for the aristocracy did even more.
The English countryside may be delightful in the summer, but for winter give me London. However, he sighed resignedly, and rose from his chair, 'I will say good-bye till tomorrow. What train do you catch? 'Do you mean to say, I demanded, 'that you have the nerve to come back to Sanstead after what you have told me about yourself? 'You entertain some idea of exposing me to Mr Abney?
As in many English country houses, the kitchen at Sanstead House was at the end of a long corridor, shut off by doors through which even pistol-shots penetrated but faintly.
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