Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/58



''They play very low at the club, fortunately, for I lost 13/-, which would have been £10, had I been playing R. A. C. points. Also they make me too late to dress for dinner, which doesn't matter: nothing matters in this world.''

''For the rest, I have reason to think that I shall begin to cheer up from to-morrow and to remain cheerful until Saturday. That is "speech-day"—I presume at Malvern College—when I expect to see an awful invasion of horribobble papas and mammas.''

Bless you. The hoped-for cheerfulness has not yet arrived, he laments on 14. 6. 16''. I live in one of the most tragic of worlds. But I have had more conversation. The place of the Dane with the fatted calves has been taken by a parson, a passon, a parsoon, an elderly parsoon with the complete manner of the late Mr. Penley in The Private Secretary: he would like to give every German a good, hard slap, I am sure. He is a much-travelled man; and his ignorance of every place which he has visited is thoroughly entertaining''

''I am becoming popular at the club: they took 12/- out of me yesterday. I must set my teeth and get it back though.''