Talking to a striker. Might have been quite friendly, the way they were talking together.

Chips, thinking it over a good many times, always added to himself that Kathie would have approved, and would also have been amused.

Because always, whatever happened and however the avenues of politics twisted and curved, he had faith in England, in English flesh and blood, and in Brookfield as a place whose ultimate worth depended on whether she fitted herself into the English scene with dignity and without disproportion. He had been left a vision that grew clearer with each year—of an England for which days of ease were nearly over, of a nation steering into channels where a hair’s breadth of error might be catastrophic. He remembered the Diamond Jubilee; there had been a whole holiday at Brookfield, and he had taken Kathie to London to see the procession. That old and legendary lady, sitting in her carriage like some crumbling wooden doll, had symbolized impressively so many things that, like herself, were nearing an end. Was it only the century, or was it an epoch?

And then that frenzied Edwardian decade, like an electric lamp that goes brighter and whiter just before it burns itself out.

Strikes and lockouts, champagne suppers and unemployed marchers, Chinese labor, tariff reform, H.M.S. Dreadnought, Marconi, Home Rule for Ireland, Doctor Crippen, suffragettes, the lines of Chatalja…

An April evening, windy and rainy; the fourth form construing Vergil, not very intelligently, for there was exciting news in the papers; young Grayson, in particular, was careless and preoccupied. A quiet, nervous boy.

“Grayson, stay behind—umph—after the rest.”

Then:—

“Grayson, I don’t want to be—umph—severe, because you are generally pretty good—umph—in your work, but to-day— you don’t seem—umph—to have been trying at all. Is anything the matter?”

“N-no, sir.”

“Well—umph—we’ll say no more about it, but—umph —I shall expect better things next time.”

Next morning it was noised around the School that Grayson’s father had sailed on the Titanic, and that no news had yet come through as to his fate.

Grayson was excused lessons; for a whole day the School centred emotionally upon his anxieties. Then came news that his father had been among those rescued.

Chips shook hands with the boy. “Well, umph—I’m delighted, Grayson. A happy ending. You must be feeling pretty pleased with life.”

“Y-yes, sir.”

A quiet, nervous boy. And it was Grayson Senior, not Junior, with whom Chips was destined later to condole.

CHAPTER 11

And then the row with Ralston. Funny thing, Chips had never liked him; he was efficient, ruthless, ambitious, but not, somehow, very likable. He had, admittedly, raised the status of Brookfield as a school, and for the first time in memory there was a longish waiting list. Ralston was a live wire; a fine power transmitter, but you had to beware of him.

Chips had never bothered to beware of him; he was not attracted by the man, but he served him willingly enough and quite loyally. Or, rather, he served Brookfield. He knew that Ralston did not like him, either; but that didn’t seem to matter. He felt himself sufficiently protected by age and seniority from the fate of other masters whom Ralston had failed to like.

Then suddenly, in 1908, when he had just turned sixty, came Ralston’s urbane ultimatum. “Mr. Chipping, have you ever thought you would like to retire?”

Chips stared about him in that book-lined study, startled by the question, wondering why Ralston should have asked it. He said, at length: “No— umph—I can’t say that—umph—I have thought much about it—umph—yet.”

“Well, Mr. Chipping, the suggestion is there for you to consider. The Governors would, of course, agree to your being adequately pensioned.”

Abruptly Chips flamed up. “But—umph—I don’t want— to retire. I don’t—umph—need to consider it.”

“Nevertheless, I suggest that you do.”

“But—umph—I don’t see—why—I should!”

“In that case, things are going to be a little difficult.”

“Difficult? Why—difficult?”

And then they set to, Ralston getting cooler and harder, Chips getting warmer and more passionate, till at last Ralston said, icily: “Since you force me to use plain words, Mr. Chipping, you shall have them. For some time past, you haven’t been pulling your weight here. Your methods of teaching are slack and old-fashioned; your personal habits are slovenly; and you ignore my instructions in a way which, in a younger man, I should regard as rank insubordination. It won’t do, Mr.