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wouldn’t be the Bolderwoods I know.’
    Sir Bernard, who took this for a pleasantry and found it not quite to his liking, signed to the butler for a final glass of claret. ‘I was remarking that the Bolderwoods are of considerable antiquity – I believe in the county of Kent. Latterly, however, the main branch of the family has lived much in South America, where I understand them to have considerable interests. We must not disparage commerce, Captain Cox – provided, of course, that it is on the large scale.’ And Sir Bernard (in whose eyes, as we have seen, shone the awe of one whose universe is on a very large scale indeed) sipped his claret with some complacency.
    Captain Cox, who appeared not given to undercurrents of satirical feeling, concentrated upon writing ‘Bolderwood’ in his diary – a quite new diary, unseasonable to the time of year, which he might have bought for the express purpose of recording the requirements and occasions of his prospective employer. ‘And the address?’ he asked.
    But Sir Bernard’s mind had strayed elsewhere. ‘Humphrey–’ he began – and paused as he observed Captain Cox’s pencil once more travel over the paper. It was perhaps a sleepiness following upon the excellent Paxton claret that this momentarily reduced the young man to an automatism so accurately recalling the jurors in Alice in Wonderland . Becoming conscious of what he was doing, he blushed and hastily thrust the diary into his hip-pocket – this apparently as the most inaccessible place he could at the moment command.
    ‘Humphrey–?’ said Captain Cox.
    ‘I was about to remark that Humphrey, not unnaturally, has a good deal interested such schoolmasters as he has had. It is a pity they have not managed to make a little more of him. Understanding, I am sure, is what he needs. But these people have at times written quite voluminous reports, and it occurs to me that you might usefully run through them. If we take our coffee in the study, it will be possible for you to do so.’
    If Captain Cox reflected that Humphrey himself might be a good deal more illuminating than his reports he had the tact not to say so, and Sir Bernard’s plan was accordingly adopted. Many of Humphrey’s previous preceptors, it turned out, had expatiated at some length on his abilities and shortcomings in Latin, Maths, Geography, Scripture, and similar intellectual pursuits, while others had made remarks on his industry, degree of personal cleanliness, attitude to manly sports, table manners, veracity, loquacity, and sundry other character traits commonly coming beneath a schoolmaster’s eye. Captain Cox conscientiously perused these memorials for about an hour, and at the end of this period informed Sir Bernard that no very clear picture of the boy emerged. Sir Bernard, approving of this honesty, gloomily concurred. He then wrote out a cheque, requested the new tutor to buy a shot-gun and any other necessary gear, led him out into the hall, and bade him farewell.
    As Captain Cox walked away from the Paxton mansion and its magnificence, and as the Paxton coffee continued to settle down upon the Paxton claret, he reflected upon a certain unacknowledged mistrust which had lurked in his consciousness for some time. Was young Humphrey Paxton such that any prospective tutor might be expected to retreat in dismay upon a first ripening of acquaintance? Certainly there was ground for suspecting something of the sort. For, as matters at present stood, they were to meet only in the uncompromising atmosphere of Euston railway station, and some ten minutes thereafter they would be travelling together in an express which made its first stop at Crewe. Was this the cunning of Sir Bernard, who was so plainly a terribly brainy old bird? Captain Cox feared that it was. He had, in fact, let himself in for what might prove an uncommonly tiresome job. But this did not, perhaps, greatly disturb him. He would do his conscientious best with Humphrey.