Chapter IX Summary

After Katherine's death, Chips turned into an old man—old beyond his years. Although he was only fifty and had graying hair before his wife's death, it was now that everyone seemed to notice it. His odd remarks were taken as something an old man can get away with. (Now eighty, Chips thinks back with a chuckle at being called old at fifty.) Chips' eccentricities were accepted—his fraying almost threadbare gown, the ritualistic way in which he called roll. Years later he could remember the sequences of names on the roster he had called in alphabetical order, wondering what happened to all of them. When he did well at a game of fives, he overhead the comment that he did well for an old chap. He was permitted to be an old man by staff and students alike...