Marlborough, and owing to the ease with which his infant studies had
been conducted, was obliged to enter by a low form. But he had, as we
have already said, an enquiring mind. He had also a clear brain, all
the better for not having been crammed in childhood; and, therefore,
strong in body, full of health and good spirits, and just as keen to
get knowledge as to get a rare bird's egg, he began his school-days
with everything in his favour. The result was that 1874 found him in
the sixth, and one of the brilliant boys of his time.

Dr. Haig-Brown, as we have said, was sure to have been impressed by
B.-P., and there is no need for his assurance that he remembers the
boy perfectly. Of course, when one sits in his medieval study and asks
the Doctor to discourse of B.-P., he begins by recalling Ste's love of
fun; indeed, it is with no great willingness that he leaves that view
of his pupil. But the boy's inflexibility of purpose, his uprightness
and his eagerness to learn are as equally impressed upon the
headmaster's mind, and he likes to talk about the exhilarating effect
which B.-P.'s virile character had upon the moral tone of the school.
"I never doubted his word," Dr. Haig-Brown told me, and by the tone of
the headmaster's voice one realised that B.-P. was just one of those
boys whose word it is impossible to doubt. A clean, self-respecting
boy.

He was the life of the school in those entertainments for which
Charterhouse has always been famous, and his reputation as a wit
followed him from the stage into the playground. B.-P. was a keen
footballer, and whenever he kept goal there was always a knot of
grinning boys round the posts listening with huge delight to their
hero's facetiæ. He also had the habit, such were his animal spirits,
of giving the most nerve-fluttering war-whoop imaginable when rushing