Some scenes were acted from the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, the same scenes we had acted at Membland, but I took no part in them. Then came the unutterable joy of going home for the holidays, which were spent at Membland. When I arrived and had my first schoolroom tea I was rather rough with the toast, and Chérie said: “Est-ce là les manières d’Ascot?” At the end of the holidays I spent a few days in London, and was taken to the play, and enjoyed other dissipations which made me a day or two late in going back to school. The holiday task was Bulwer Lytton’s _Harold_, which my mother read out to me. As soon as I arrived at school I was given the holiday-task paper and won the prize, a book called _Half-hours in the Far South_, which I have never read, but which I still possess and respect.
During the Lent term we had athletic sports: long jump, high jump, hurdle, flat and obstacle races. I won a heat in a hurdle race and nearly got a place in the final, the only approach to an athletic achievement in the whole of my life. A curious drama happened during this term. A boy called Phillimore was the chief actor in it. He was in the first division. One day the Headmaster went up to London. During his absence a message was sent round in his name by one of the undermasters. The message was brought by one of the boys to the various divisions. It was to the effect that we were allowed or not allowed to do some specific thing. When the boy, who was new and inexperienced, brought the message into the first division, Phillimore said to him, “Ask Mr. So-and-so with my compliments whether the message is genuine.” “Do you really want me to ask him?” asked the boy. “Yes, of course,” said Phillimore. The little boy went back to the master, who happened to be the severest of all the masters, and said: “Phillimore wants to know whether the message is genuine.” As soon as the Headmaster returned the whole school was summoned, and the Headmaster in his black gown told us the dreadful story of Phillimore’s unheard-of act. Phillimore was had up in front of the whole school, and told to explain his conduct. He said it was a joke, and that he had never dreamt that the boy would deliver the message. The explanation was not accepted, and Phillimore was stripped of his first division privileges. The privileges of the first division were various: they were allowed to dig in a place called the wilderness, which was a sand-heap through which ran a light truck railway without an engine. They went on special expeditions.