A few more pictures.  First, Sunday morning.  Gertrude goes off to Sunday School.  She likes teaching and bossing.  Hilda and Hugh, who are greater pals than brother and sister can often be, go off to St. James’, where there will be good music and an interesting sermon.  Tommy goes to St. Mark’s, a good Protestant place, or to the beach, where curious and recondite doctrines are weekly disputed.  B. goes to St. George’s, protesting.  There is plenty of room for his hat, there is a congenially aggressive spirit against Rome and it slightly irritates Ma.  Pa is not up yet.  Ma and I go to All Souls’, because it is the nearest poor church, and Ma finds it easier to worship where there are no pew rents, and the seats are uncushioned, and there are few rich people.  I am ever loyal to Ma.

I often wonder whether the reason why my family are all Churchgoers now is not that at that time we could choose our church.

The next picture is Sunday night.  “Pa” and I, and perhaps some of the other boys, set out for St. Paul’s, at the other end of the town.  Then, after the service, follows an immense walk all through the slums of the town.  We talk of Australia, where Pa once had a sheep run; of theology, of the past and the future.  This weekly walk is something of a privilege, and rather solemn.  It makes me feel older.

It is spring.  I am at Rugby, and in the “San” with ophthalmia.  The South African war is raging.  Hugh is there.  I am told that Hugh is dead.  He has been shot in a glorious but futile charge at Paardeberg.  I can’t realize it.  I am an object of interest, of envy almost, to the whole school.  The flag is half-mast because my brother is dead.  Every one is kind, touched.  I put on an air as of a martyr.

I get a heartbroken letter from my mother.  Will I come home?  Or hadn’t I better go to Uncle Jack’s?  If I go home we shall make each other worse.  It is better for me than for Maurice, who is with the fleet in the Mediterranean with no one to comfort him.

Ma has had a great shock.  She feels it desperately.  She thinks all the others feel it as much.  Except Hilda, we don’t.  There is a huge piece taken out of Ma’s life and Hilda’s life, because they were so unselfishly devoted to Hugh.  Pa, also, has lost much, but he is a philosopher.

I go to Uncle Jack’s and shoot rabbits.  The holidays come and go.  Tommy is at Oxford; I am at Rugby.  Pa is immersed in theological speculation about the next world; B. is in the Mediterranean.  Ma sends Gertrude and Hilda away for a long change.  They go, and come back.  Something about Ma frightens them.  She and Pa come near Rugby and stay with Uncle Jack.  The holidays come.  I learn that for the first time for about twenty years Ma is to go away without Pa.  I am to meet her at Hereford, and we are to go to Wales.  Ma forgets things.  She is more loving than ever, but her memory is going.  We go to communion together in the little village church.