ns.

Considine replied formally. He did not jump at the idea of taking
Arthur, a fact which convinced her that education at Lapton Manor was
something of a privilege, and this made her disregard the fact that the
privilege was expensive. Still, his note was direct and business-like.
He made it clear that if he were willing to take backward or difficult
boys he expected to be paid a little more for his trouble, but the
confident tone in which he wrote suggested that he was a man who knew
his business.

He did know his business. Considine was a clear-headed and capable
person with a degree of confidence in himself that went a long way
towards assuring his success. He proposed, finally, that it would be
more satisfactory for both of them if Mrs. Payne were to visit him at
Lapton and see the place and its owners for herself. Then they could
talk the matter over, and define the peculiar difficulties of Arthur's
case. More and more impressed, she accepted the proposal. Considine
met her train at Totnes with a dogcart and drove her to Lapton Manor.

XII

In that part of the world the early autumn is the most lovely season of
the year. The country in its variety and sudden violences of shape and
colour seemed to her sensationally lovely after the mild beauty of her
own midland landscape, dominated and restrained by the level skylines
of Cotswold. Considine, who spoke very little as he drove, but was a
stylish whip, told her the names of the villages through which they
passed, names that were as soft and sleepy as Lapton Huish itself. He
showed her his church, with a flicker of pride, and the hung slates of
the Rectory wall through a gap in the green. Then they passed into the
open drive of Lapton Manor.

He explained to her that the estate had been neglected and was now the
subject of an experiment; but it seemed to her that the level fields
through which the drive extended had already come under the influence
of his orderly mind. To everything that Considine undertook there
clung an atmosphere of formal precision that suggested nothing so much
as the eighteenth century. The Manor, suddenly sweeping into view from
behind a plantation of ilex, confirmed this impression. It was such a
house as Considine must inevitably have chosen, a solid Georgian
structure, square and sombre, with a pillared portico in front shading
the entrance and its flanking windows. The window panes of the upper
storey blazed in