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who were least likely to be troublesome when they learned
that it did not pay. He was proud of his form and as eager
at fifty-five that it should do better in examinations than
any of the others as he had been when he first came to the
school. He had the choler of the obese, easily roused and as
easily calmed, and his boys soon discovered that there was
much kindliness beneath the invective with which he con-
stantly assailed them. He had no patience with fools, but
was willing to take much trouble with boys whom he sus-
pected of concealing intelligence behind their wilfulness.
He was fond of inviting them to tea; and, though vowing
they never got a look in with him at the cakes and muffins,
for it was the fashion to believe that his corpulence pointed
to a voracious appetite, and his voracious appetite to tape-
worms, they accepted his invitations with real pleasure.
Philip was now more comfortable, for space was so limit-
ed that there were only studies for boys in the upper school,
and till then he had lived in the great hall in which they all
ate and in which the lower forms did preparation in a pro-
miscuity which was vaguely distasteful to him. Now and
then it made him restless to be with people and he wanted
urgently to be alone. He set out for solitary walks into the
country. There was a little stream, with pollards on both
sides of it, that ran through green fields, and it made him
happy, he knew not why, to wander along its banks. When
he was tired he lay face-downward on the grass and watched
the eager scurrying of minnows and of tadpoles. It gave him
a peculiar satisfaction to saunter round the precincts. On
the green in the middle they practised at nets in the sum-

10 Of Human Bondage