"I do. You see I am a very careless devil myself. I'll swear that I left your garden gate open when I came in, Mac, and your hens will be all over the road." Mac looked out at the window. "They are!" he chuckled, and I laughed. "You seem to think that slovenliness is a virtue," said Simpson with a faint smile. "I don't, really, but I hold that it is a natural human quality." "Are your pupils slovenly?" he asked. "Lots of 'em are. You're born tidy or you aren't." "When these boys go out to the workshop, what then? Will a joiner keep an apprentice who makes a slovenly job?" "Ah!" I said, "you're talking about trade now. You evidently want our schools to turn out practical workmen. I don't. Mind you I'm quite willing to admit that a shoemaker who theorises about leather is a public nuisance. Neatness and skill are necessary in practical manufacture, but I refuse to reduce education to the level of cobbling or coffin-making. I don't care how slovenly a boy is if he thinks." "If he is slovenly he won't think," said Simpson. I smiled. "I think you are wrong. Personally, I am a very lazy man; I have my library all over the floor as a rule. Yet, though I am lazy physically I am not lazy mentally. I hold that the really lazy teacher is your "ring the bell at nine sharp" man; he hustles so much that he hasn't time to think. If you work hard all day you never have time to think." Simpson laughed. "Man, I'd like to see your school!" "Why not? Come up tomorrow morning," I said. "First rate!" he cried, "I'll be there at nine." "Better not," I said with a smile, "or you'll have to wait for ten minutes." * * * He arrived as I blew the "Fall in" on my bugle. "You don't line them up and march them in?" he said. "I used to, but I've given it up," I confessed. "To tell the truth I'm not enamoured of straight lines." We entered my classroom. Simpson stood looking sternly at my chattering family while I marked the registers. "I couldn't tolerate this row," he said. "It isn't so noisy as your golf club on a Saturday night, is it?" He smiled slightly. Jim Burnett came out to my desk and lifted _The Glasgow Herald_, then he went out to the playground humming _On the Mississippi_. "What's the idea?" asked Simpson. "He's the only boy who is keen on the war news," I explained. Then Margaret Steel came out. "Please, sir, I took _The Four Feathers_ home and my mother began to read them; she thinks she'll finish them by Sunday. Is anybody reading _The Invisible Man_?" I gave her the book and she went out. Then Tom Macintosh came out and asked for the Manual Room key; he wanted to finish a boat he was making. "Do you let them do as they like?" asked Simpson. "In the upper classes," I replied. Soon all the Supplementary and Qualifying pupils had found a novel and had gone out to the roadside. I turned to give the other classes arithmetic.