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At Eton he found that he could do what he liked, that nobody cared. Nevertheless the two Wildhernes continued to develop: he discovered that the one Wildherne was very useful for covering the other. He was good-looking, athletic, and amiable; it was not difficult for him to be popular, and he learnt that if he never showed enthusiasm about anything, never talked about anything that was "odd"—books, pictures, music, religion, scenery were things never to mention—he was popular and universally accepted as a "good fellow." When he was about sixteen he discovered that there were certain other boys in the school who cared for the things for which he himself cared. They made a set of their own, but they were all of them "odd," and some of them scandalous: he did not therefore join them, because his shyness about the things for which he cared caused him to detest publicity of any kind.

It was about this time that his love for his father acutely developed. He liked his mother, but it was his public personality with which she was concerned. She did not seem to be aware that he had any other. His father was as shy as himself, and their true communication with one another might have been long delayed had it not been for a serious attack of pneumonia that kept him prisoner during a whole summer at Wintersmoon when he was seventeen.