herself, and through this their countenance for her
nephew. She found the football club in a slight money difficulty and at
once gave half a sovereign towards its removal. The boys had no chance
against her, she shot them down one after another as easily as though
they had been roosting pheasants. Nor did she escape scathless herself,
for, as she wrote to me, she quite lost her heart to half a dozen of
them. "How much nicer they are," she said, "and how much more they know
than those who profess to teach them!"

I believe it has been lately maintained that it is the young and fair who
are the truly old and truly experienced, inasmuch as it is they who alone
have a living memory to guide them; "the whole charm," it has been said,
"of youth lies in its advantage over age in respect of experience, and
when this has for some reason failed or been misapplied, the charm is
broken. When we say that we are getting old, we should say rather that
we are getting new or young, and are suffering from inexperience; trying
to do things which we have never done before, and failing worse and
worse, till in the end we are landed in the utter impotence of death."

Miss Pontifex died many a long year before the above passage was written,
but she had arrived independently at much the same conclusion.

She first, therefore, squared the boys. Dr Skinner was even more easily
dealt with. He and Mrs Skinner called, as a matter of course, as soon as
Miss Pontifex was settled. She fooled him to the top of his bent, and
obtained the promise of a MS. copy of one of his minor poems (for Dr
Skinner had the reputation of being quite one of our most facile and
elegant minor poets) on the occasion of his first visit. The other
masters and masters' wives were not forgotten. Alethea laid herself out
to please, as indeed she did wherever she went, and if any woman lays
herself out to do this, she generally succeeds.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Miss Pontifex soon found out that Ernest did not like games, but she saw
also that he could hardly be expected to like them. He was perfectly
well shaped but unusually devoid of physical strength. He got a fair
share of this in after life, but it came much later with him than with
other boys, and at the time of which I am writing he was a mere little
skeleton. He wanted something to develop his arms and chest without
knocking him about as much as the school games did. To supply this want
by some means w