Have great fun at school. There is one fellow, nicknamed ‘Babylonian Dick’ with whom I am ceaselessly fighting. We are like two young bears, always quarrelling and arguing with the greatest good-humour. I go off into fits of laughter, even when at home, on thinking of the tortures we inflict on each other. ‘Dicky’ Lenihan, the Irish teacher, and ‘Pa’ Keating are two characters such as Dickens or ‘The Spectator’ would delight in, and every day there is some new joke current about the doings or sayings of one of them. ‘Pa’ is, I am sure, over sixty, since he taught my aunt Wally6 when a girl, but he is still as sharp as an eagle, and has an extraordinary quaint and humorous manner about him. ‘Dicky’, on the other hand, is middle-aged, and not so sharp. Our chief delight is to flatter him in all manner of ways, and he, apparently at all events, takes it all in. ‘Dicky’ teaches Irish and ‘Pa’ maths.
