They come down
here and trot us round and say what a luxurious place it is compared
with the stern old Spartan days. They know something, though. They ask
us to have meals with them at an hotel. They take care not to face a
luxurious house-dinner. And while we dine they tell yarns about the
hardness of the old days and how it toughened a fellow. And then,
because about 1870 it was the custom to tip a boy five bob, they fork
out five bob and tell you not to waste it.
If the Head had any sense--only you can't expect sense from Heads--he'd
put up a notice at the school gates: "Parents, Uncles and Friends are
respectfully reminded that the cost of tuck has increased three hundred
per cent. since 1914." Why, old Badham, my bedroom prefect, who was a
fag in 1914, turned up the other day and declared that then he could buy
four pounds of strawberries for a bob, and that a fag could get enough
chocolate for two bob to give him a week in the sick-room.
Yet we have uncles coming down in trains (fare fifty per cent. extra),
smoking cigars (costing two hundred per cent.
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