y took opportunity to thank Mr.
Fortune for alterations made in his letters and for dealings carried out
with his clients, also for direct interference in his workshops. Mr.
Fortune liked Twyning, but he did not respect Twyning, consciously or
subconsciously.

VI

Sabre greatly desired the promised admission to partnership. He desired
it largely for what he knew he would make it bring in the form of
greater freedom from Mr. Fortune's surveillance, but much more for the
solid personal satisfaction its winning would give him. It would be a
tribute to his work, of all the greater value because he knew it would
be bestowed grudgingly and unwillingly, and he was keenly interested in
and proud of his work. The publishing of educational textbooks "for the
use of schools" had been no part of the firm's business until he came
into it. The idea had been his own, and Mr. Fortune, because the idea
was not _his_ own, had very half-heartedly assented to it and very
disencouragingly looked upon it in the fiddlingly small way in which he
permitted it to be begun.

From the outset it had been a very considerable success. Sabre was
interested in books and interested in education. He had many friends
among the large staff of Tidborough School masters and had developed
many acquaintances among the large body of members of the teaching
profession with whom the firm was in touch. He was fond of discussing
methods and difficulties of encouraging stubborn youth in the arid paths
of assimilating knowledge, and he had a peculiarly fresh and sympathetic
recollection of his own boyish flounderings in those paths. To these
tastes and qualities, and perhaps because of them, he found he was able
to bring what was incontestably a flair for discovering the sort of book
that needed to be compiled and, what was equally important, the sort of
man to compile it. Also, in his capacity of general editor of the
volumes, to give much stimulating suggestion and advice to the authors.

He had never been so pleased as on the day when the _Spectator_, in an
extended notice of four new textbooks, had written, "It is always a
pleasure to open one of the school textbooks bearing the imprint of
Fortune, East and Sabre and issued in the pleasing format which this
firm have made their own. Their publications give the impression of a
directing mind inspired with the happy thought of presenting textbooks,
not for the master, but for the pupil, and of carrying out th