'He knows more about the history of the Plantagenet period than any man I ever met,' Gillespie put in, striking while the iron was hot. 'If you should happen to hear of any chance at the Record Office, now, or any department like that, a recommendation from you----' Sir Bernard snapped his fingers. 'Too late by fifty years!' he cried, with a pout of discontent--'too late by fifty years, at the very least, Mr. Gillespie! The competitive examination system has been the ruin of the country! Why, look at the sort of young men that scrape in somehow nowadays, even into the diplomatic service-some of them, I assure you, with acquired _h's_, which to my mind are almost worse than no _Ws_ at all, they're so painfully obtrusive. I mean Trev for the diplomatic service; and in the good old days, before this nonsense cropped up, I should have said to the fellow at the head of the F. O. for the time being: “Look here, I say, Smith or Jones, can't you find my eldest boy a good thing off the reel in our line somewhere?” And, by Jove! sir, before the week was out, as safe as houses, I'd have seen that boy gazetted outright to a paid attachéship at Rio or Copenhagen. But what's the case nowadays? Why, ever since this wretched examination fad has come up to spoil all, my boy'll have to go in and try his luck, helter-skelter, against all the tinkers and tailors, and soldiers and sailors, and butchers and bakers, and candlestick-makers in the United Kingdom. That's what examinations have done for us. It's simply atrocious!' Gillespie, with native tact, poured oil on the troubled waters. 'There are departments of the public service,' he said with polite vagueness, 'where birth and position no doubt enable a man to serve the State better than most of us others can serve it; and diplomacy is one of them. But, even judged by that standard, the name of Plantagenet is surely one which has done solid work in its time for the country; for the monarch, as Joseph the Second so profoundly said, is the chief of the Civil Service. As to examinations'--and he looked at Sir Bernard with a quiet smile--'men of the world like yourself know perfectly well there are still many posts of a reserved character which the head of a department holds, and must hold, in his own gift personally.' Sir Bernard gazed hard at him and smiled a mollified smile. 'Oh, you've found that out already, have you?' he murmured dryly. 'Well, you're a very intelligent and well-informed young man: I wouldn't object to you at all for a Secretary of Legation. A secretary, as a rule, is another name for a born fool; they're put there by the F. O. on purpose to annoy one.' And he smiled a bland smile, and nodded sagely at Gillespie. But no more was said for the moment about a post for Dick Plantagenet. As father and son sat together at lunch, however, that morning in Edward Street, the Born Poet recurred somewhat tentatively to the intermitted subject.