CHAPTER 10The culminating point of that summer, if summer it could be called when everyone was in tweeds and the harvest was already flattened by wind and rain and none of the hens were laying and milk was short, had now arrived, and Mr. Birkett was to preside over his last Speech Day, receive the plaudits and farewells of Governors, parents, old boys and present boys, and say his last public words. It is no good pretending that the Birketts were not in a way glad to lay down their work after so many years, six of which as Mr. Birkett said to Mrs. Morland had counted as about twenty owing to war conditions and the last of which, owing to the horrors of peace, had been ten years of years. They had a comfortable home waiting for them where Mr. Birkett could work on his own subject without in
