upported a magnificent Bible; to a richly embroidered altar cloth on
which stood a strikingly handsome set of communion plate; to a font
chastely carried out in marble; to an altar chair in oak and velvet that
few less than a suffragan bishop would have dared take seat in; and to
an example or two of highest art in needlework and embroidery in the
form of offertory bags and testament markers. The other window of the
central shop was a lesson to the profane in the beauty, the dignity and
the variety of vestments. It also informed rural choirboys, haply in
Tidborough on a treat, what surplices can be like if the funds and the
faith are sufficiently high to support them.

The windows of the shop to the left (as you faced the lectern and the
vestments) displayed school furniture and school fittings bearing the
characteristic "F.E. & S." stamp. Here were adjustable desks for boys at
which no boy could possibly sit round-shouldered, which could be
adjusted upwards for tall boys and downwards for short boys, and the
seats of which could be advanced for boys afflicted with short legs and
retired for boys in the possession of long legs. It was believed by
those who had seen the full range of "F.E. & S." desk models that, if a
headmaster or bursar had telegraphed to Fortune, East and Sabre the
arrival of a Siamese twin boy at his school, a desk specially contrived
for the nice accommodation of a Siamese twin boy would have been put on
the railway before the telegraph messenger had loitered his way out of
the shadow of The Precincts.

By an ingenious contrivance ink could not be spilt from the inkwells of
the "F.E. & S." models; rubber beading most properly nullified the
boyish idea that desk lids were made for the purpose of slamming to
blazes the nerves of masters and the calm in which alone high education
can be served.

Equal skill, science, art, and the experience of generations had
produced the model of a master's desk which partnered the desks of the
pupil. Maps of as many countries as might be desired showed in frames up
and down which they followed one another by the silent turning of a
handle. A blackboard on an easel looked across the desks at a wall into
which was let a solid slab of blackboard. The window adjoining this
display exhibited a miniature classroom in which the "F.E. & S." system
of classroom ventilation maintained air so pure and fresh that the most
comatose pupil could not but keep alert and receptive i