all equally wet about the
hair. They were fed with fried soles, cold tongue, meringues, tea,
toast, and marmalade--not at all a bad business, thought Martin, and
well worth the previous exertions of the toilet.

Mr Berney sat at the head of the table. He was a little, freckled man
with a fair moustache: he had become a schoolmaster through despair and
a housemaster through patience. His chief interest lay in natural
history and botany, and he was never so happy as when he forgot all
about the school and his house and tramped the surrounding country. He
managed his house with a bare minimum of efficiency and was never loved
and never hated. In the routine of teaching at school and
administration at home he worked steadily, without mistakes and without
enthusiasm. He said all that a housemaster ought to say about games
and work and religion and moral tone without stopping to think whether
it was desirable or even consistent, for he had long ago discovered
that to start thinking would be to court anxiety, if not disaster. He
lived, on the whole, for his holidays.

At the other end of the table was his wife, small and dark and
interesting. She it was who ran the house, not because she liked it,
but because she worshipped her husband and knew that he loathed
responsibility. She was popular with the boys, who could pardon her
complete inability to understand games (a heinous sin in a
housemaster's wife) because of her unfailing kindness and sympathy.
She fed them well, as schools go, believed in culture, and used to
gather select spirits to read poetry in her drawing-room.

Martin sat next to her and found her easy to talk to. She too was
relieved, because she usually had to struggle with an athletic
conversation, a prolonged torture in which she would cause horror and
dismay by confusing half-backs and cover-points. But Martin could talk
about books and even pictures: she became interested and forgot to dole
out meringues, until, reminded by her husband, she looked up and saw
with shame the expectant faces of her guests. Afterwards she took them
to her comfortable drawing-room and talked on general school subjects:
she kept them until she was certain that of this batch Martin alone had
possibilities. Then she drove them to prep.

The Fosketts, as befitted a headmaster and his wife, were more
formidable. To begin with, their hospitality involved, in addition to
the clean collar and sloshed hair, the wearing