“Very strange,” said I. “And now, Summers, if you will bring me my bills and a new cheque-book, we will begin to get things into order.” THE USHER OF LEA HOUSE SCHOOL Mr. Lumsden, the senior partner of Lumsden and Westmacott, the well-known scholastic and clerical agents, was a small, dapper man, with a sharp, abrupt manner, a critical eye, and an incisive way of speaking. “Your name, sir?” said he, sitting pen in hand with his long, red-lined folio in front of him. “Harold Weld.” “Oxford or Cambridge?” “Cambridge.” “Honours?” “No, sir.” “Athlete?” “Nothing remarkable, I am afraid.” “Not a Blue?” “Oh, no.” Mr. Lumsden shook his head despondently and shrugged his shoulders in a way which sent my hopes down to zero. “There is a very keen competition for masterships, Mr. Weld,” said he. “The vacancies are few and the applicants innumerable. A first-class athlete, oar, or cricketer, or a man who has passed very high in his examinations, can usually find a vacancy—I might say always in the case of the cricketer. But the average man—if you will excuse the description, Mr. Weld—has a very great difficulty, almost an insurmountable difficulty. We have already more than a hundred such names upon our lists, and if you think it worth while our adding yours, I daresay that in the course of some years we may possibly be able to find you some opening which——” He paused on account of a knock at the door. It was a clerk with a note. Mr. Lumsden broke the seal and read it. “Why, Mr. Weld,” said he, “this is really rather an interesting coincidence. I understand you to say that Latin and English are your subjects, and that you would prefer for a time to accept a place in an elementary establishment, where you would have time for private study?” “Quite so.” “This note contains a request from an old client of ours, Dr. Phelps McCarthy, of Willow Lea House Academy, West Hampstead, that I should at once send him a young man who should be qualified to teach Latin and English to a small class of boys under fourteen years of age. His vacancy appears to be the very one which you are looking for. The terms are not munificent—sixty pounds, board, lodging, and washing—but the work is not onerous, and you would have the evenings to yourself.” “That would do,” I cried, with all the eagerness of the man who sees work at last after weary months of seeking. “I don’t know that it is quite fair to these gentlemen whose names have been so long upon our list,” said Mr. Lumsden, glancing down at his open ledger. “But the coincidence is so striking that I feel we must really give you the refusal of it.” “Then I accept it, sir, and I am much obliged to you.” “There is one small provision in Dr. McCarthy’s letter. He stipulates that the applicant must be a man with an imperturbably good temper.” “I am the very man,” said I, with conviction.