Mr. C., it was discovered, had been regularly levying a tribute from his neighbour at breakfast for some weeks, and the other boy, a much smaller boy, had had to go without his sausage. Mr. C. was severely flogged in front of the whole school. Boys who went to Scotland for the holidays were allowed to leave a day before the others, and as we had an all day’s journey to Devonshire, we shared the same privilege; so did Pierre de Jaucourt, who went to France. This inspired Broadwood to make the following lampoon, which was good-naturedly but insistently chanted by the rest of the school on the day before we went away:
“The Honourables are going away to-morrow,
And ten to one the Count goes too.
We poor swinies we don’t go,
We poor swinies we don’t go.
The Honourables are going away to-morrow,
And ten to one the Count goes too.”
When we went home for the holidays for the first time from Eastbourne the train stopped at Slough. The St. Vincent’s term had ended a few days before the Ascot term, and there, on the platform of Slough Station, we saw the Headmaster of our Ascot school, surrounded by the first division and evidently enjoying a first division expedition.
“Why don’t you put your head out and say how do you do to them?” said my mother, but Hugo and I almost hid under the seat, and we lay right back from the windows, spellbound, till the train went on.
Broadwood and I used to meet in the holidays in London. Broadwood used to say to his parents that he was having luncheon with me in Charles Street, and I used to say I was having luncheon with Broadwood in Eccleston Square, but what really happened was that we used to go to a bun shop, or have no luncheon at all, as neither of us would be seen at luncheon with a friend in each other’s homes.