"But what? If she is all right, why hesitate? Write at once, my dear fellow, and snap her up before some one else does!"
Val's eyes twinkled.
"It's not a she at all. That's the difficulty. It's a master who is applying."
I whistled my astonishment, then shook my head in distrust.
"If he's not a fraud he must be fooling you!" I rejoined irreverently.
"No capable master would come up here."
"Read that before you make a pronouncement," said Val, as he threw a letter across the table to me.
It proved to be from an old college friend of Val's, and backed up very warmly the application for our vacant post of a young man who was an excellent trained teacher, who had tried his vocation as a monk, and had failed through a breakdown in health. He was in want of an easy berth in good country air, where he could pick up his strength and fit himself for entering college to train for the secular priesthood in a couple of years. No man with sense in his head would think twice about closing with such a promising candidate; Val wrote back gladly accepting the young man.
So Bernard Murray came to Ardmuirland, and won all our hearts in no time.
"That gentleman's got the face of a priest, Mr. Edmund," was Penny's remark at first sight of him.
"Murray's a treasure!" cried Val in delight. "He'll do wonders with our bairns, Ted!"