"Very good, sir."
A pleasant, placid life, at Mrs. Wickett's. He had no worries; his pension was adequate, and there was a little money saved up besides. He could afford everything and anything he wanted. His room was furnished simply and with schoolmasterly taste: a few bookshelves and sporting trophies; a mantelpiece crowded with fixture cards and signed photographs of boys and men; a worn Turkey carpet; big easy-chairs; pictures on the wall of the Acropolis and the Forum. Nearly everything had come out of his old housemaster's room in School House. The books were chiefly classical, the classics having been his subject; there was, however, a seasoning of history and belles-lettres. There was also a bottom shelf piled up with cheap editions of detective novels. Chips enjoyed these. Sometimes he took down Vergil or Xenophon and read for a few moments, but he was soon back again with Doctor Thorndyke or Inspector French. He was not, despite his long years of assiduous teaching, a very profound classical scholar; indeed, he thought of Latin and Greek far more as dead languages from which English gentlemen ought to know a few quotations than as living tongues that had ever been spoken by living people. He liked those short leading articles in the Times that introduced a few tags that he recognized. To be among the dwindling number of people who understood such things was to him a kind of secret and valued freemasonry; it represented, he felt, one of the chief benefits to be derived from a classical education.
So there he lived, at Mrs. Wickett's, with his quiet enjoyments of reading and talking and remembering; an old man, white-haired and only a little bald, still fairly active for his years, drinking tea, receiving callers, busying himself with corrections for the next edition of the Brookfeldian Directory, writing his occasional letters in thin, spidery, but very legible script. He had new masters to tea, as well as new boys. There were two of them that autumn term, and as they were leaving after their visit one of them commented: "Quite a character, the old boy, isn't he? All that fuss about mixing the tea—a typical bachelor, if ever there was one."
Which was oddly incorrect; because Chips was not a bachelor at all. He had married, though it was so long ago that none of the staff at Brookfield could remember his wife.
(●♡∀♡)(๑♡⌓♡๑)(｡♡‿♡｡)(✿ ♡‿♡)(◍•ᴗ•◍)❤( ◜‿◝ )♡(｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡(•ө•)♡♥╣[-_-]╠♥♡(> ਊ <)♡(´∩｡• ᵕ •｡∩`)ෆ╹ .̮ ╹ෆ(灬º‿º灬)♡(｡・//ε//・｡)(〃ﾟ3ﾟ〃)(´ε｀ )( ˘ ³˘)♥(~￣³￣)~(◕દ◕)(ʃƪ＾3＾）(*＾3＾)/～♡(っ˘з(˘⌣˘ )(●’3)♡(ε`●)(๑˙❥˙๑)(/^-^(^ ^*)/( ˶ ❛ ꁞ ❛ ˶ )(*˘︶˘*).｡*♡(◍•ᴗ•◍)✧*。
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