'What should I hear?'
'Mr. Lester is going to retire at Christmas!'
'Does that account for your irrational excitement?'
'And it has not occurred to you that the grammar-school would be the making of you! Endowment, 150 pounds—thirty, forty boys at 10 pounds per annum, 400 pounds at least. That is 550 pounds—say 600 pounds for certain; and it would be doubled under a scholar and a gentleman—1200 pounds a year! And you might throw it open to boarders; set up the houses in the Terrace, and let them at—say 40 pounds? Nine houses, nine times forty—'
'Well done, Fitzjocelyn! At this rate one need not go out to Peru.'
'Exactly so; you would be doubling the value of your own property as a secondary consideration, and doing incalculable good—'
'As if there were any more chance of my getting the school than of the rest of it!'
'So you really had not thought of standing?'
'I would, most gladly, if there were the least hope of success. I can't afford to miss any chance; but it is mere folly to talk of it. One-half of the trustees detest my principles; the others would think themselves insulted by a young man in deacon's orders offering himself.'
'It is evident that you are the only man on whom they can combine who can save the school, and do any good to all those boys—mind you, the important middle class, whom I would do anything to train in sound principles.'