He was himself as learned in his profession as any man would care to be, but his common sense, he flattered himself, was far superior to his learning,--and he flattered himself with justice. He was a devout Christian of some Anglican persuasion; his family numbered thirteen sons and one daughter. His income was enormous. I should add that a knowledge of the world had taught him what real value lay behind men like Sir Charles Repton, who had stood the strain of public life and had found it possible to do such great service to their country. The mind of Dr. Bowker was dominated also by two considerations: the first a permanent irritation against the survival of those social forms which permitted men an advantage purely hereditary; the second a conviction, or rather a certitude, drawn from clear thinking, that organisation and method could deal with the cloudy blunders of mere general knowledge as a machine can deal with dead matter, or as an army can deal with civilians. Dr. Bowker’s birth was reputable and sound; his father had been a doctor before him in a country town, and an earnest preacher in the local chapel; his grandfather a sturdy miner, his great-grandfather a turnkey in Nottingham Gaol. He was therefore of the middle rank of society; but after all, his social gospel such as it was weighed upon him less than his scientific creed. He did not _think_: he _knew_. What he did not know he did not pretend to know. For the rest he was always a little nervous and awkward in society, and preferred the communion of his books and an occasional spin upon a bicycle to the conversation of the rich. I should add that he revered Sir Charles Repton not only as all men of the world must revere a great statesman who has found it possible for many years of the strain of public life to be of service to his country, but also as a man of inestimable value in proving that the solid Nonconformist stock could do in administration, when it chose to enter that sphere, what it had so triumphantly shown it could do in commerce. The two men were shown into an enormous room on the ground floor where it was the custom of Sir Charles (in happier days!) to receive those whom he feared or would inveigle. Lady Repton at once joined them.