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My mother came out and looked at him sadly. I was old enough to see both sides—to see that, in one way, my dad was making a motley of himself for these boys. But, at the same time, he was having what, out West, we would call "a good time." He was enjoying his summer vacation.

The trouble was that it was Sunday; and my mother thought he had been better employed singing a psalm to the boys—and he knew that she thought that, when, looking across the stableyard, he caught her eyes. Result: he sniffed twice, blew his nose loudly and retired quite inside the stable where the boys followed—and sang, a little more quietly, another Spanish song a little more extravagant. Also my mother wept just two tears, and no more, and retired to the garden seat with the New Testament.

That Sunday was to me a long, long day, for on the Monday I expected to have news of the scholarship and I hoped, most ardently, that I had not won. But Monday was a long day too—because news did not come.

I know nothing in life worse than waiting. To act is good; to rest is good; to loaf is good. But to wait, to wait is horrible, undermining, breaking-down.