To You, Mr Chips by James Hilton Page A

reading a book, he couldn't help intervening: 'I'd be careful of that rail, if I were you. It doesn't look too safe.'
    The boy looked up, got up, looked down at the rail, then shook it. As if to prove Chips's point, it obligingly collapsed and set them both laughing. 'So there you are,' said Chips. 'A minute more and you'd have been over the edge.'
    'Don't tell father, that's all,' answered the boy. 'I'd never hear the end of it. I once cut my head open doing the same thing. See here?' And he tilted his head as he pointed to an inch-long scar above his right temple.
    'What's the book?' Chips asked, thinking it better not to admire such an obviously valued trophy.
    The boy then showed the book--an anthology of poems, open at Macaulay's ballad about the coming of the Spanish Armada. 'See,' cried the boy, with gathering enthusiasm, 'it says--"The red glare on Skiddaw roused the burglars of Carlisle." Where's Carlisle?'
    'Burghers, not burglars. Carlisle's a town about thirty miles away.'
    'And that's Skiddaw, isn't it?' The boy pointed to the green and lovely mountain that rose up at the back of the hotel.
    'Yes, that's it.'
    'And who were the burglars--burghers?'
    'Oh, they were just citizens of the town. When they saw the bonfires on top of Skiddaw they knew it as the signal that the Spanish Armada had been sighted.'
    'Oh, you know the poem, then?'
    Considering that Chips had read it to his class at Brookfield for thirty years or more, he was justified in the slight smile that played over his face as he answered: 'Yes, I know it.'
    'You like poetry?'
    'Yes. Do you?'
    'Yes. . . . I wish you'd come in the hotel and meet my father. We're staying here, you know. I want to climb Skiddaw, but he says it's too much for him at his age, and he won't let me go by myself because he says I'd break my neck over a precipice.'
    'You probably would,' said Chips, 'if there  were  any precipices. But there aren't--on Skiddaw. It's a very safe mountain.'
    'Oh, do come along and tell him that. . . .'
     
    So Chips, almost before he realised what was happening, found himself piloted inside the breakfast-room and presented to Mr. Richard Renshaw, a squat, pasty-faced, pompous-mannered heavyweight of fifty or there-abouts. One glance at him was enough to explain his reluctance to climb Skiddaw, and one moment of his conversation was enough to suggest that the boy's love of poetry would awake no answering sympathy in the father. 'I'm a plain man,' began Mr. Renshaw, expounding himself with great vigour in a strong Lancashire accent. 'Just an ordinary plain business man--I don't claim to be anything else. I'm here because my doctor said I needed a rest-cure--and there's no rest-cure to me in pushing myself up the side of a mountain. So David must just stay down with me and make the best of it. Especially as it's due to him--very largely--that I  need  the rest-cure.'
    He glanced at the boy severely, but the latter made no comment and showed no embarrassment. Presently David moved away and left the two men together. 'That boy's a terror,' continued Mr. Renshaw, pointing after him.
    'He's not mine, understand--he's my second wife's by an earlier marriage. My lad's quite different--fine young chap of twenty-five--accountant in Birmingham--settled down very nicely,  he  has. But David . . . well, it's my belief there's bad blood in him somewhere.'
    Chips went on listening; there was nothing else to do.
    'Been sacked from two schools already . . . a proper good-for-nothing, if you ask me.'
    Chips hadn't asked him, but now he did ask, with the beginnings of interest: 'What was he sacked for?'
    'Well, from the first school it was for breaking into the matron's bedroom in the middle of the night and scaring her out of her wits . . . and the second school sacked him for an outrageous piece of hooliganism in the school chapel during Sunday service. Isn't that enough?'
    'Quite enough,' agreed Chips. 'But what's the position now? What are you going to do