"It's eleven o'clock at night and I ought to be getting to bed, but it's mail day to-morrow and I'm going to the Chesters at Fareham quite early, so I'll do your letter to-night. I'm sleepy enough, for I've been out with the Hamchester hounds to-day. Mr. Ballinger has come to hunt here, why, I leave you to imagine, and he mounted me and took me. Tony had forbidden me to go till we heard from you, but he went to Oxford; then I met Mr. Ballinger; then I had ever such a row with Miss Foster, and I felt reckless; and as Tony was not there to make me feel conscientious or repentant I went. I didn't enjoy it much, though the day and the little mare and the run were all as good as they could be. Mr. Ballinger is going to the Chesters also. There's a Primrose meeting to-morrow night, and I've got to sing some absurd tum-ti-tum sort of Jingo song about Empire and Tariff Reform and a large loaf. They call it a 'topical' song over here. I'd much rather sing them 'The Vicar of Bray' or 'Love's Young Dream' or 'Rory O'More,' but they won't let me. I offered to.
"Dad, dear, you will have gathered from my letters that Miss Foster and I do not exactly hit it off. I could forgive her not liking me, though I think it's bad taste on her part, if only she wouldn't treat me as though I were a contagious disease. The boys call her Germs, but indeed it's me that she makes feel a mass of microbes of the most noxious kind. She's rude, Dad, downright rude; and it would be absurd to say she doesn't mean it, for she does. And what's more, she takes care that I know she means it. I wouldn't mind a bit if she was ever so pernicketty and peppery if only she would be kind and pleasant sometimes, but she never is pleasant--to me. And yet I can't help admiring her for the way she looks after B. House. She really loves the boys, and if one of them is the least little bit ill Miss Foster is in a dreadful way. Both she and Tony are very worried just now because a boy is ill. They fear he has got scarlet fever. There has been a case in another house.
"Miss Foster has taken it into her head that I am bad for the boys, and that's one reason why she dislikes me. In what way I'm bad for them I don't know, and any that I have met seem to like talking to me, but whenever they do, I can see she is worried. I think she likes Tony awfully--but who doesn't? Yet she doesn't seem to make a really comfortable home for him somehow. As for poor Paunch! she hates him as much as she hates me, and never says a civil word to him.
"Paunch and I are great friends; we sit and shiver together in the chill blast of Miss Foster's displeasure, and 'a fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind,' especially Paunch. He is a most earnest young man, Dad; all day long he is thinking of the influence he may be on others, and the result is that Tony, who never thinks about himself at all, makes far more impression when he tells a boy he's a silly young ass than Paunch would if he talked about ideals till Doomsday. It's very odd how the boys really care what Tony thinks; of course they don't say so, but any one can see it. Mr. Johns is awfully good at games, so the boys respect that. The other day I asked Mr. Hamilton, one of the pre's, if Tony ever gave them a 'pi-jaw' as they call it.
"He looked very funny for a minute, and then he said, 'I don't know any one I'd sooner go to than old Bruiser if I was in a very bad mess.' It wasn't an answer to my question, but it was enlightening all the same. Tony makes me think of those lines at the beginning of 'Stalky':
"'For they taught us common sense,
Tried to teach us common sense,
Truth and God's own common sense,
Which is more than knowledge.'
"I was reading 'Stalky' last night, and that seemed to me to explain Tony. The queer thing is that both Mr. Johns and Miss Foster, though they love him dearly, think Tony is a bit of a slacker. Miss Foster, because he will not work himself up into a fever whenever there's a rumour of mumps or chicken-pox; and Mr. Johns because Tony never talks about moral training, and never seems to be watching or prying about the boys; and yet I remember Paddy saying that somehow undesirable chaps never come back to B. House, though how or why nobody never knows, and I'm certain Tony's ideals are quite as high as Mr. Johns', although he never talks about them.
"I think it's rather a great thing, don't you, to send so many boys out into the world so that they keep straight and work and are useful members of the community, and so that they remember you and know you'd be awfully sorry if things went wrong. All the years I've known Tony, I've thought it such a pity he was anything so humdrum as a schoolmaster. Since I've been here I don't think that any more. I think it's such a jolly good thing for all the boys who've come under him. I wish he'd had the house all the time Paddy was there; but then, Paddy had him in the holidays, so it didn't matter so much.
"Paddy seems very happy at the Shop. He knows a lot of gunner people outside, and he goes out every Saturday and Sunday, but he's rather sick that they don't ride till their second term.
"Please don't fancy I'm unhappy here, I like it awfully. Every one is as kind and jolly as possible, and the attitude of Germs just gives the necessary touch of excitement to the situation. She positively dislikes music, poor woman, so I must be a trying guest. I'm obliged to practise, for I'm always singing somewhere. The music-hater is decidedly in the minority in this world.