causes. For one thing my lavish hospitality had
exhausted my pocket-money in the first three weeks, and I was
ashamed to write home for more so soon. This speedy end to my
apparent wealth certainly made it easier for the boys to find
out that I was not one of themselves, and they began to look at
me askance and leave me out of their conversations. I was made
to feel once more that I had been born under a malignant star
that did not allow me to speak or act as they did. I had not
their common sense, their blunt cheerfulness, their complete
lack of sensibility, and while they resented my queerness they
could not know how anxious I was to be an ordinary boy. When I
saw that they mistrusted me I was too proud to accept the crumbs
of their society like poor mother F----, and I withdrew myself into
a solitude that gave me far too much time in which to examine my
emotions. I found out all the remote corners of the school in
which it was possible to be alone, and when the other boys went
for walks in the fields, I stayed in the churchyard close to the
school, disturbing the sheep in their meditations among the
tomb-stones, and thinking what a long time it would be before I
was old enough to die.

Now that the first freshness of my new environment had worn off, I
was able to see my life as a series of grey pictures that repeated
themselves day by day. In my mind these pictures were marked off
from each other by a sound of bells. I woke in the morning in a bed
that was like all the other beds, and lay on my back listening to
the soft noises of sleep that filled the air with rumours of healthy
boys. The bell would ring and the dormitory would break into an
uproar, splashing of water, dropping of hair-brushes and shouts of
laughter, for these super-boys could laugh before breakfast. Then we
all trooped downstairs and I forced myself to drink bad coffee in a
room that smelt of herrings. The next bell called us to chapel, and
at intervals during the morning other bells called us from one class
to another. Dinner was the one square meal we had during the day,
and as it was always very good, and there was nothing morbid about
my appetite, I looked forward to it with interest. After dinner we
played football. I liked the game well enough, but the atmosphere of
mud and forlorn grey fields made me shudder, and as I kept goal I
spent my leisure moments in hardening my aeesthetic impressions. I
never see the word football today without re