Chapter I: Preface

This is a school story; but Chiltern School has yet to be founded and the masters and boys who figure in the following pages have never existed outside the author’s brain. It is necessary to say so much, partly because most stories of this kind have admittedly dealt with particular schools, and partly because many readers have very little idea of the workings of the imaginative faculty. At all events, when a professional man ventures to write fiction, they insist on seeing history or caricature, and proceed to affix labels; for there is a general assumption that professional men, and schoolmasters in particular, are necessarily devoid of imagination.

Once more then, Chiltern is not a real school and its masters are not real masters. But, though not real, they are not impossible--at least, so the author believes. For men, like boys, are unconsciously moulded by their environment and tend to conform to types; and, given a school like Chiltern, there would probably be masters like the Chiltern masters.

G. F. B.

_June, 1913._

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE ELECTION 1

II. MR. FLAGGON PAYS A VISIT 14

III. EXIT DR. GUSSY 29

IV. THE FIRST SKIRMISH 43

V. MR. TIPHAM 56

VI. THE CLOVEN HOOF 69

VII. THE AFFAIR OF LE WILLOW 79

VIII. THE PARENTS’ COMMITTEE 92

IX. “GOD’S IN HIS HEAVEN” 103

X. THE LANCHESTER LETTERS 114

XI. MR. CHOWDLER WINS A BATTLE AND MEETS WITH A REBUFF 126

XII. THE EXPLOSION 139

XIII. IN DARK PLACES 151

XIV. THE DAY OF DECISION 164

XV. AFTERMATH 176

THE LANCHESTER TRADITION