"My dear sir, 'Blues' are now a drug in the market," he said. "Surely you read the daily papers, especially the Daily Wire"?
"No," I replied, "I am no bookworm."
He coughed rather nastily and I began to get irritated with the fellow.
"Then I must explain," he continued, "that there has been a great outcry against over-athleticism in the public schools, in all schools, in fact, and I fear your 'Blue' is not worth ..."
"Quite so," I broke in; "'not worth a damn,' you were going to say."
"I was going to say no such thing, Mr. Carey," he replied stiffly. "At any rate, we will do our best for you. You cannot hope for more than a private school at first, and your success in the profession you have—er—chosen, will depend entirely upon your success in a comparatively humble sphere."
A week afterwards, I received two or three little forms telling me to apply to various headmasters.
Prospects were not cheering, and the salaries offered would about have kept me in cigarettes at Oxford. To cut a long story short, I eventually became third master—there were only three of us—in Morstone House School in Norfolk, at a salary of eighty pounds a year and all found—except washing.
Morstone House School was a sort of discreet modern edition of Dotheboys Hall. I do not mean to say, of course, in these enlightened days, that the boys were starved or ill-treated. But everything was cut down to the very margin—to the margarine, as my colleague Lockhart, who was a cripple, and a wit—the Head got him cheap for that—would occasionally remark.
For two years I remained at Morstone, a miserable enough life for an ex-blood, you will say—only there were consolations. One of them, and to me it was a very great one indeed, was that Morstone was situated in a remote village on the east coast, on the edge of vast saltings or sea marshes intersected by great creeks of sullen, tidal water. It was five miles to the nearest little town, Blankington-on-Sea, and as lonely a place as well could be conceived. Nevertheless, these vast marshes stretching for many miles on either side formed one of the finest wild-fowl districts in the whole of England. I was, and always had been, passionately fond of shooting. I had saved my guns from the wreck, and the whole of my leisure time in winter was taken up with perhaps the most fascinating of all sports.