"What can you teach?"
"I can teach all the ordinary subjects."
"I'm getting a University man," said Mr. Pennyquick.
"Temporarily," Mr. Wriford urged. As every passage of their conversation brought him nearer this sudden chance or threw him further from it, his panic at its failure, and what must happen, then increased desperately. "Temporarily," he urged. "I've had a public-school education."
"Yes, you look it!" said Mr. Pennyquick, and laughed.
"English subjects," cried Mr. Wriford. "Latin, mathematics. I can do it if you want it."
Mr. Pennyquick glanced over his shoulder at his dejected-looking boys, then stared back again at Mr. Wriford and began to speak with more consideration and less fierceness. "I'm not saying," said Mr. Pennyquick, "that I don't want temmo—temmer—PLAY UP! Tem-po-rary assistance. I do. I'm very ill. I'm shaken all to bits. I ought to be in bed. What I'm saying is I don't want you. I don't know anything about you. I've got the reputation of my school to consider. That's what I'm saying to you."
Dizziness began to overtake Mr. Wriford—the field to rock in long swells, Mr. Pennyquick by turns to recede and advance, swell and diminish. He felt himself upon the verge of breaking down, wringing his hands in his extremity and staggering away. But where? Where? "Temporarily," he pleaded. "Temporarily."
"You might drink for all I know," said Mr. Pennyquick, pronouncing this possibility as if consumed with an unnatural horror of it.
"I don't drink."