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It was breaking a tradition very dear to them both.

What would have happened to Anthony had his father taken the line that so many soldiers would have taken, and shouted,

"What the Devil! Of course the boy'll go to Eton. Never heard such damn' rubbish in my life. They'll soon knock the nonsense out of him," I shudder to think, especially had such an attitude been encouraged by a high-spirited, never-heard-such-bosh type of mother, with a yelp of,

"My son? Of course he'll go; and I shall tell his House Master to stand no nonsense. Put him through it. Make a man of him."

Had such a line been taken with Anthony, it is much more likely that they'd have made a corpse or an idiot of him.

Anthony was fortunate; indeed, he was singularly blessed, in his parents.

Nor, I am glad to say, did he himself, ever, in later life, inveigh against the Public School system simply because it was not the right system for him. He did not proclaim to the world that his was a rotten Public School because it didn't amend and adapt its system to his peculiar requirements; he didn't proclaim, for example, that because he was taught French by an Englishman whose accent was not pure Parisian, the Public School system is an abominable one and stands thereby self-condemned; he did not declare that it is a soul-destroying, character-crushing machine that casts all those unfortunates committed to its care into one uniform mould and, while they are malleable, stamps them with one uniform pattern.