For one great school leads to another. Schools are living things, and like all living things they must grow and reproduce their kind and go on from conquest to conquest—or fall under the sway of the Farrs and Dads and stagnate, become diseased and malignant, and perish. But Woldingstanton was not to perish. It was to spread. It was to call to its kind across the Atlantic and throughout the world.... It was to give and receive ideas, interbreed, and develop....
Across the blue October sky the white clouds drifted, and the air was full of the hum of a passing aeroplane. The chained dog that had once tortured the sick nerves of Mr. Huss now barked unheeded.
“I would like to give one of the chapels of the races to the memory of Gilbert,” whispered Mr. Huss....
§ 4
The door at the foot of his bed opened, and Mrs. Huss appeared.
She had an effect of appearing suddenly, and yet she moved slowly into the room, clutching a crumpled bit of paper in her hand. Her face had undergone some extraordinary change; it was dead white, and her eyes were wide open and very bright. She stood stiffly. She might have been about to fall. She did not attempt to close the door behind her.
Mrs. Croome became audible rattling her pans downstairs.
When Mrs. Huss spoke, it was in an almost noiseless whisper. “Job!”
He had a strange idea that Mrs. Croome must have given them notice to quit instantly or perpetrated some such brutality, a suspicion which his wife’s gesture seemed to confirm. She was shaking the crumpled scrap of paper in an absurd manner. He frowned in a gust of impatience.
“I didn’t open it,” she said at last, “not till I had eaten some breakfast. I didn’t dare. I saw it was from the bank and I thought it might be about the overdraft.... All the while....”