CHAPTER XXV
THE FIRST BATTLE
Lewisham's inquiries for evening teaching and private tuition were essentially provisional measures. His proposals for a more permanent establishment displayed a certain defect in his sense of proportion. That Melbourne professorship, for example, was beyond his merits, and there were aspects of things that would have affected the welcome of himself and his wife at Eton. At the outset he was inclined to regard the South Kensington scholar as the intellectual salt of the earth, to overrate the abundance of "decent things" yielding from one hundred and fifty to three hundred a year, and to disregard the competition of such inferior enterprises as the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and the literate North. But the scholastic agents to whom he went on the following Saturday did much in a quiet way to disabuse his mind.
Mr. Blendershin's chief assistant in the grimy little office in Oxford Street cleared up the matter so vigorously that Lewisham was angered. "Head Master of an endowed school, perhaps!" said Mr. Blendershin's chief assistant. "Lord!—why not a bishopric? I say,"—as Mr. Blendershin entered smoking an assertive cigar—"one and twenty, no degree, no games, two years' experience as junior—wants a headmastership of an endowed school!" He spoke so loudly that it was inevitable the selec-
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