Page:My Life and Loves.djvu/373

Rh Most of the abler boys liked me, I believe, and a little characteristic incident came to help me. There was a Form-master named Wolverton, an Oxford man and son of a well-known Archdeacon, who sometimes went out with me to the theatre or the roller-skating rink in West Street. One night at the rink he drew my attention to a youth in a straw hat going out accompanied by a woman.

"Look at that", said Wolverton, "there goes So and So in our colors and with a woman! Did you see him?"

"I didn't pay much attention", I replied, "but surely there's nothing unusual in a Sixth Form boy trying his wings outside the nest."

At the next Masters' Meeting, to my horror, Wolverton related the circumstance and ended up by declaring that unless the boy could give the name of the woman, he should be expelled. He called upon me as a witness to the fact.

I got up at once and said that I was far too short-sighted to distinguish the boy at half the distance and I refused to be used in the matter in any way.

Dr. Bigge thought the offence very grave: "the morals of a boy", he declared, "were the most important part of his education: the matter must be probed to the bottom: he thought that on reflection I would not deny that I had seen a College boy that night in colors and in suspicious company.

I thereupon got up and freed my soul; the whole crew seemed to me mere hypocrites.

"In the Doctor's own House", I said, "where I take evening preparation, I could give him a list of boys who are known as lovers, notorious even, and so long as this vice is winked at throughout the school, I shall be no party to persecuting anybody for yielding to legitimate and natural passion." I