“You are quite right in seeking independence,” replied Nalini, “and I shall be glad to help you. But lower-grade teachers are miserably paid, and their prospects are no better. It is only graduates who can aspire to a head-mastership. Are you one?”
“No, sir, but I passed the F.A. examination in 1897.”
“Ah, then, you are a Diamond Jubilee man—that’s a good omen,” rejoined Nalini, with a shade of sarcasm in his voice. “What were your English text-books?”
“I read Milton’s Absalom and Achitophel, Dryden’s Holy Grail, and many other poems, but I’m not sure of their titles after all these years.”
Nalini suspected that his friend’s English lore was somewhat rusty. In order to test him further, he asked, “Can you tell me who wrote ‘Life is real, life is earnest,’—that line applies to you!”
Pulin fidgeted about before answering. “It must have been Tennyson—or was it Wordsworth? I never could keep poetry in my head.”
Nalini thought that an F.A. might have remembered Longfellow’s Psalm of Life, but he refrained from airing superior knowledge.
“Do you know any mathematics?” he inquired.
“Mathematics!” replied Pulin joyously. “Why, they’re my forte—-I am quite at home in arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. Please ask me any question you like.”
“Well, let us have Prop. 30, Book I. of Euclid.”