THE UNDYING FIRE
long red neck, and he had an abundance of parti-coloured hair, red and white, springing from a circle round the crown of his head, from his eyebrows, his face generally, and the backs of his hands. He wore a blue soft shirt with a turn-down collar within a roomy blue serge suit, and that and something about his large loose black tie suggested scholarship and refinement. His manners were elaborately courteous. Mr. Dad was a compacter, keener type, warily alert in his bearing, an industrial fox-terrier from the Midlands, silver-haired and dressed in ordinary morning dress except for a tan vest with a bright brown ribbon border. Mr. Farr was big in a grey flannel Norfolk suit; he had a large, round, white, shiny, clean-shaven face and uneasy hands, and it was apparent that he carried pocket-books and such-like luggage in his breast pocket.
They consumed the lobster appreciatively, and approached in a fragmentary and tentative manner the business that had assembled them: namely, the misfortunes that had overwhelmed Mr. Huss and their bearing upon the future of the school.
"For my part I don't think there is such a thing as misfortune," said Mr. Dad. "I don't hold with it. Miscalculation if you like."
"In a sense," said Mr. Farr ambiguously, glancing at Sir Eliphaz.
"If a man keeps his head screwed on the right way," said Mr. Dad, and attacked a claw with hope and appetite. Mr. Dad affected the parsimony of unfinished sentences.
"I can't help thinking," said Sir Eliphaz, putting
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