of Sunday clothes and
the completion of prep in odd moments. The six new boys at Berney's
all went together, very timid and overwhelmed at the thought of being
entertained by one so remote and so tremendous as the Head. He was not
in their eyes so infinitely great as Llewelyn, the Captain of Football:
but, distinctly, he counted.

Foskett was one of the new headmasters. He was young (Elfrey figured
early in the _cursus honorum_ of one who aspired to the greatest
thrones), and he had declined to take holy orders. But, though
fashionably sceptical about the hardest dogmas, he believed intensely
in all the right things, in the Classics and the Empire and Moral Tone
and the Educational Value of Athletics and Our Duty to the Poor and the
Need for Personal Service. Consequently his name was already a byword
with all the conscientious young men in London and at the universities
who form quasi-religious clubs and believe that the world can be
reformed by heartiness and committee meetings. Foskett was a very able
man, who knew quite well what he wanted and was determined to get it:
being an Englishman to the backbone, he combined an affection for the
word Duty with an invincible belief that Duty, for him, always
corresponded with his own particular ambitions. He was by no means a
hypocrite: it simply never occurred to him that his policy of 'getting
on' might be inconsistent with some of his moral ideals. While he had
chosen to disguise the more unpalatable articles of faith with a sugary
paste of scientific catch-words, he never questioned the absolute value
of Christian Morality.

He had married, characteristically, the daughter of a colonial bishop,
a tall, gaunt woman with sparkling eyes and an immense capacity for
enthusiasm. Not only was she prepared to take up all her husband's
causes, but she also took up him and worshipped at his shrine with a
persistent and unflinching devotion. He represented for her all that
was estimable: he was strong and wise and pure: he was just the man to
mould the lives and ideals of the new generation, to make the finest
religion and the finest patriotism vital forces in the school, and to
pass through the richest headmasterships in England to a dignified old
age as head of an Oxford college. They were both of them supremely
methodical, and she bore him a child every three years. Naturally her
guests were overwhelmed. While Foskett looked quiet and authoritative
and made bad jo