‘You could look straight at me, to start with,’ Charles almost replied, for Scrodd was up to his usual game of peering ironically in his direction, vaguely taking in with his short-sighted glance the general area within which his interlocutor might be found, like one who has seen a tiny insect on the wallpaper, lost it again, and is half-interestedly looking for it. But annoyed as he felt at this habitual, perfunctory insolence, he refrained from any sign of impatience, for, in the three years during which he and Scrodd had not met, he had become familiar with the peculiar psycho­logical burden under which the schoolmaster was sinking. Fresh from the world of Hutchins and Lockwood, he could read the bland imbecile like a newspaper: the early ambitions, the resolve to apply half his energies to his ordinary duties and half to the studies that were to lead him to the limelight, and finally the fading of his dreams, leaving him rigidly set in a travesty of his original position, with half his attention focused on whatever he was doing or whomever he was talking to, and the other half feebly glinting out from the paralysed area of his mind, focused, with terrible obstinacy, on nothing.

‘I thought you might be so kind as to help me professionally, sir,’ Charles said briskly.

Scrodd gave a slight twitch that brought his wandering gaze to within three inches of Charles’s shoulder. A sneer appeared on his face.

‘I could have saved you trouble, Lumley, if you had mentioned in your letter what it was you wanted to see me about: I could have told you that this school is fully staffed, and that I have no influence elsewhere.’

Charles leaned forward in incredulous pity. The scarecrow actually thought that he, a free human being, wished to enrol in his shambling regiment of pedagogues.

‘My intention is not to enter the teaching profession, Mr. Scrodd. My vocational requirements are,’ he hesitated, ‘simpler and easier to fulfil.’

For a moment as he faced the enormity of the task in hand, Charles felt a renewal of his old confusion, guilt, and blankness. His tongue stiffened so as to choke all utterance, and he became the same ludicrously insecure figure he had been during all his previous visits to that study. Then, immediately, the mists cleared, and the sanity he had so dearly bought swept him forward on its powerful current until his feet were once more on solid ground.

‘And in what way,’ demanded Scrodd insolently, looking ironically past him, ‘are they easy for me to fulfil?’

Charles leaned back in his chair, and fixed his eyes on the thick lenses opposite.

‘This school has windows. Someone must have to clean them from time to time; either someone from outside, or one of the school servants who could be better employed about his ordinary duties. Now this, as you yourself once remarked to me, is the age of the specialist.’