a public-school boy?" asked the precise young
man.

"No," said Lewisham.

"Where were you educated?"

Lewisham's face grew hot. "Does that matter?" he asked, with his eye
on the exquisite grey trousering.

"In our sort of school--decidedly. It's a question of tone, you know."

"I see," said Lewisham, beginning to realise new limitations. His
immediate impulse was to escape the eye of the nicely dressed
assistant master. "You'll write, I suppose, if you have anything," he
said, and the precise young man responded with alacrity to his
door-ward motion.

"Often get that kind of thing?" asked the nicely dressed young man
when Lewisham had departed.

"Rather. Not quite so bad as that, you know. That waterproof
collar--did you notice it? Ugh! And--'I see.' And the scowl and the
clumsiness of it. Of course _he_ hasn't any decent clothes--he'd go
to a new shop with one tin box! But that sort of thing--and board
school teachers--they're getting everywhere! Only the other
day--Rowton was here."

"Not Rowton of Pinner?"

"Yes, Rowton of Pinner. And he asked right out for a board
schoolmaster. He said, 'I want someone who can teach arithmetic.'"

He laughed. The nicely dressed young man meditated over the handle of
his cane. "A bounder of that kind can't have a particularly nice
time," he said, "anyhow. If he does get into a decent school, he must
get tremendously cut by all the decent men."

"Too thick-skinned to mind that sort of thing, I fancy," said the
scholastic agent. "He's a new type. This South Kensington place and
the polytechnics an turning him out by the hundred...."

Lewisham forgot his resentment at having to profess a religion he did
not believe, in this new discovery of the scholastic importance of
clothing. He went along with an eye to all the shop windows that
afforded a view of his person. Indisputably his trousers _were_
ungainly, flapping abominably over his boots and bagging terribly at
the knees, and his boots were not only worn and ugly but extremely ill
blacked. His wrists projected offensively from his coat sleeves, he
perceived a huge asymmetry in the collar of his jacket, his red tie
was askew and ill tied, and that waterproof collar! It was shiny,
slightly discoloured, suddenly clammy to the neck. What if he did
happen to be well equipped for science teaching? That was nothing. He
speculated on the cost of a complete outfit. It would be difficult to
get such grey trousers as those he ha