One by one the members of the crowd entered and returned. It seemed to Edwin that his turn would never come. All the time that he waited his imagination (accursed gift!) was playing with the hidden scene within: the long table, that he had seen only once before, and, at the head of it, the lean, bearded figure in the silk gown wielding an absolute power of life and death like God in the Old Testament. Yes, it was just like that. He remembered a minatory text that hung cobwebbed in one of the attics at home: PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD. It was not pleasant to hear these muffled sounds of chastisement, but what was a flogging (the Head’s favourite word) compared with the more devastating fate that awaited him? “That’s why he’s keeping me till last,” he thought. “Ingleby . . .” said the sergeant. Edwin had time to fancy that his tone implied a more awful enormity than he had put into any other name. He entered, and stood waiting in the sunlight. It was rather less frightening than he had imagined, this long room, relatively luxurious, and the pale man at the head of the table with his lined, black-bearded face, and the peculiar twitching of his left arm which had always added to the sinister side of his equipment. For a moment he took no notice of Edwin. Then he looked up and smiled. Would the storm never break? “Ah . . . Ingleby.” “Yes, sir.” “I hope your entomological zeal isn’t going to take you up to the racecourse, Ingleby. How are the puss-caterpillars getting on?” He smiled again, and showed his teeth beneath his shaggy moustache. Edwin was seized with a sudden terror. The worst had happened, and now the Head was playing with him. He could say nothing. “Eh? . . . What’s the matter with you? You aren’t faint, are you? You’d better sit down.” Edwin trembled into a chair. “Now, are you all right?” “Yes, sir.” “I sent for you, Ingleby, because I have been having a talk with Mr. Leeming.” What in the world had old fat Leeming to do with it? Edwin wished he would get it over. “Mr. Leeming has always given me good reports of you . . . I don’t know if you deserve them . . . and last night I saw Mr. Cleaver, who . . . um . . . um . . . tells me that you are one of . . . No, I’ll leave that part out . . . that you’ve got plenty of brains when you choose to use them, but that you are somewhat lacking in application. H’m?” “Yes, sir.” Why wouldn’t he get to the point? “He says, Ingleby, that you’re a dreamer. Well, you know, there’s no use for dreamers in this world. They’re not wanted. Even dreamers with the blessing of good brains. H’m?” “Yes, sir.”