I looked at the ancient Rolls-Royce which was always there, and then decided to walk. It would take so much longer.

The rain was already trickling off my hair and down my neck. I turned up my collar and set off. I could see the spire of Repton Church across the fields. It seemed as slender as a sharpened pencil.

I stopped on the toll-bridge and tried to read the names so many people had scratched on the parapet; then I looked over and watched the Trent seething between the piers. The paths of white foam where the water divided looked evil and dangerous.

On the straight, flat road in front of me the telegraph wires hummed as they always had done. Some of the fields were flooded.

Six years before, my mother and I had been travelling along this road, but in the opposite direction. We had just said good-bye to my eldest brother. My mother was crying and I did not know what to do; then I looked out of the back window of the taxi and saw all our clothes scattered along the road. I shouted to the driver and we stopped. Laughing and crying, my mother and I ran back to pick up all we could find.

It was unbearable to think of it now. I walked on, counting my footsteps to blot out the picture.

I was getting near the school. The red brick Gymnasium glowed through the trees, and across the way the Hall loomed up in all its muddle of Mediaeval, Eighteenth-Century and Victorian architecture.

As I walked up the gentle hill a boy came out of the entrance to the Gym., and I saw that it was Peach. His big mouth opened wide when he saw me.

“Good God, Welch, have you come back? I heard that you’d got hold of forty pounds and had gone off to France, and someone else told me that Iliffe had taken you to Italy.”

Iliffe had shown a frank interest in people younger than himself. He had left at the end of last term.

I suddenly laughed at the extravagant stories, but I realized that Peach still thought they might be true, so I tried to tell him everything that he wanted to know.

Every step was taking me nearer to my own House. I walked slowly past the church, the dripping thatched cottage, the one remaining arch of the mediaeval gatehouse and the strange village cross, high up on its circle of steps. I could hear the pianos from the Music Schools. They chimed and jangled like an exciting orchestra of lunatics.

As I drew nearer I could not decide whether to go in at the housemaster’s entrance or the boys’. I tried to imagine which would be worst.

I opened the garden gate, and in desperation went up to the front door. The porch was covered with ivy. The leaves stood out, waving and nodding all together, like a regiment. I rang the brass bell and stood staring at the frosted glass panels, waiting for the door to open.

Clarence, the house-boy, let me in. He looked pale and unwholesome, with spots round his chin. I waited in the hall while he went to report that I had arrived.

Upstairs, in the study, I heard a deep voice say, “Show him up here.”

I screwed up all my courage. My movements were not well joined together. I made a plunge for the door and stood in front of my housemaster, smiling, but feeling burnt out and gutted inside.

He was a small man with a manly voice and dog’s lips. His head was thick and round. He began to talk.

“Look here, Welch, I’m never going to mention this again. You’ve had a brainstorm, that’s all, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t carry on just as if nothing had ever happened. I shall never hold it against you.”

I was told to sit down on one of the slippery leather chairs, and he went on talking to me about living in a community and not ruining my career. I sat very still, saying over to myself, “How funny! He thinks I’ve had a brainstorm.”

The high, childish voice of Mrs.