A Bit of a Fool #234167

I was at school at Winchester and fourteen years old when my mother died. At that age I had not any deeper feelings than the average boy, and I know that when the first grief, which is one of the simplest of human emotions, had passed away, I felt a certain sense - I will not say of relief, but of a removal of constraint, of greater freedom. I had no great compunction about annoying my father. When I did any of the usual evil things that boys do, he would get angry, and I, in consequence, defiant. He was a man, and it always seemed a fair stand-up fight. But with my mother it was different.