“Oh, here you are, Vincent!” cried Mrs. Bruce Page, close at hand. “Have you really a headache, now? Poor boy! you don’t look well. Come along with me, I want you to talk with Mr. Asquith, Mrs. Clarendon’s cousin, you know. He knows all about the Civil Service.”
Robert received the young man with a look critical indeed, but good-humouredly so. He did not seem to be able to take Mr. Lacour quite seriously, yet could not refuse a certain admiration.
“You are thinking of the Civil Service examinations?” he began.
“Well, I can’t say I’ve thought much about them,” Vincent replied, in his manner suggestive of easy achievement. “I suppose they’re very much a matter of form—the elements—and—and so on?”
“Not quite that. And competition, you remember.”
“Yes. The truth is, I haven’t looked into the thing. What do they expect you to know?”
Asquith gave an outline of the attainments looked for in a candidate for the higher clerkships.
“By Jove, that’s pretty strong!” was Vincent’s comment.
“The competition,” remarked Asquith, “makes it about the severest examination you can undergo.”
“Then that’s all up!” exclaimed the young “What would the screw be?”