The house, with a splendid avenue of limes leading
up to it, stood in a large old-world garden, where vast cedar
trees spread themselves duskily over shaven lawns round a
splashing fountain, and where scarlet geraniums blazed. Such a
beautiful old place was quite wasted as a school.
We were very well treated by both Mr. and Mrs. Chittenden, and we
were all very happy at the Grange. During my first year there one
of my elder brothers died. A child of ten, should death never have
touched his family, looks upon it as something infinitely remote,
affecting other people but not himself. Then when the first gap in
the home occurs, all the child's little world tumbles to pieces,
and he wonders how the birds have the heart to go on singing as
usual, and how the sun can keep on shining. A child's grief is
very poignant and real. I can never forget Mr. and Mrs.
Chittenden's extreme kindness to a very sorrowful little boy at
that time.
There was one curious custom at Chittenden's, and I do not know
whether it obtained in other schools in those days. Some time in
the summer term the head-boy would announce that "The Three
Sundays" had arrived, and must be duly observed according to
ancient custom.
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