Here Mr. Weston pulled out his watch and placed it prominently on the desk before him. (This was mere theatricalism, as the watch did not go.) Pause. Then a warning shuffle and seven small boys raised themselves. Mr. Weston dived into his desk and produced seven coloured dusters for cleaning blackboards. “Come here,” he said to the seven. The seven came. “You will each take one of these dusters and go out into the street and obliterate every one of the marks you have made. Then you will return.” It was Mr. Weston’s own invention, this disciplinary method. § 4 Slowly, ever so slowly, the afternoon crept by, and Mr. Weston was just beginning to congratulate himself upon having proved equal to the occasion, when an awkward but all-important fact occurred to him. If you keep your class in you have to stay in with it. Mr. Weston, of all people, ought to have learnt this lesson, yet somehow amidst the heat and sultriness of the afternoon it had escaped him. For he was tired, dead tired. And also hot. The sweat was rolling down his forehead. Oh, how he wished he had said half-past four, and not five! Confound it, why had he said five? Half-past four would really have done just as well. Only, having said five, he was bound (by that disciplinary code of his) to keep his word. He took a sheaf of notes from his inside pockets and perused them diffidently. “William Shakespeare.” It was to last about half an hour, and as yet Mr. Weston had thought about William Shakespeare only sufficiently for it to last twenty or twenty-five minutes. It would have to be padded out. Something about the “immortal bard of Avon....” On such a fine evening, thought Mr. Weston, the audience would be small. Possibly about fifteen or twenty. There would be Miss Picksley, the secretary, to receive subscriptions for the coming session. Mrs. Hollockshaw would be there to play the hymn on the American harmonium, and Mr. Sly would open with a word of prayer. The Gunter girls would sit on the back row and flirt with the Merridge boys. Possibly old Mrs. Cowburn would turn up. (Or was she dead by this time?) ... After he had read his paper there would be a few minutes for discussion. That would merely mean votes of thanks, because he would take care not to say anything controversial. Nothing about the Shakespeare-Bacon business. Then the benediction given out by Mr. Sly. With luck the whole business would be over by nine, and there would be time for a stroll through the Forest at dusk. Or perhaps, though, it would be quite dark. Heavens I Only twenty-five to five. Old Clotters was locking up in his room....