oom in the
house was wood-panelled, and there was some fine carving on the
staircase. The house, with a splendid avenue of limes leading up to it,
stood in a large old-world garden, where vast cedar trees spread
themselves duskily over shaven lawns round a splashing fountain, and
where scarlet geraniums blazed. Such a beautiful old place was quite
wasted as a school.

We were very well treated by both Mr. and Mrs. Chittenden, and we were
all very happy at the Grange. During my first year there one of my
elder brothers died. A child of ten, should death never have touched
his family, looks upon it as something infinitely remote, affecting
other people but not himself. Then when the first gap in the home
occurs, all the child's little world tumbles to pieces, and he wonders
how the birds have the heart to go on singing as usual, and how the sun
can keep on shining. A child's grief is very poignant and real. I can
never forget Mr. and Mrs. Chittenden's extreme kindness to a very
sorrowful little boy at that time.

There was one curious custom at Chittenden's, and I do not know whether
it obtained in other schools in those days. Some time in the summer
term the head-boy would announce that "The Three Sundays" had arrived,
and must be duly observed according to ancient custom. We all obeyed
him implicity. The first Sunday was "Cock-hat Sunday," the second "Rag
Sunday," and the third (if I may be pardoned) "Spit-in-the-pew Sunday."
On the first Sunday we all marched to church with our high hats at an
extreme angle over our left ears; on the second Sunday every boy had
his handkerchief trailing out of his pocket; on the third, I am sorry
to say, thirty-one little boys expectorated surreptitiously but
simultaneously in the pews, as the first words of the Litany were
repeated. I think that we were all convinced that these were regularly
appointed festivals of the Church of England. I know that I was, and I
spent hours hunting fruitlessly through my Prayer Book to find some
allusion to them. I found Sundays after Epiphany, Sundays in Lent, and
Sundays after Trinity, but not one word could I discover, to my
amazement, either about "Cock-hat Sunday" or "Spit-in-the-pew Sunday."
What can have been the origin of this singular custom I cannot say.
When I, in my turn, became head-boy, I fixed "The Three Sundays" early
in May. It so happened that year that the Thursday after "Cock-hat
Sunday" was Ascension Day, when we also went to ch