This has been a delightful day. About eleven o\'clock a rap came at the door, and a young lady entered my classroom.

"Jerusalem!" I gasped. "Dorothy! Where did you drop from?"

"I\'m motoring to Edinburgh," she explained, "on tour, you know, old thing!"

Dorothy is an actress in a musical comedy touring company, and she is a very old friend of mine. She is a delightful child, full of fun and mischief, yet she can be a most serious lady on occasion.

She looked at my bairns, then she clasped her hands.

"O, Sandy! Fancy you teaching all these kiddies! Won\'t you teach me, too?" And she sat down beside Violet Brown. I thanked my stars that I had never been dignified in that room.

"Dorothy," I said severely, "you\'re [Pg 177]talking to Violet Brown and I must give you the strap."

The bairns simply howled, and when Dorothy took out her wee handkerchief and pretended to cry, laughter was dissolved in tears.

It was minutes time, and she insisted on blowing the "Dismiss" on the bugle. Her efforts brought the house down. The girls refused to dismiss, they crowded round Dorothy and touched her furs. She was in high spirits.

"You know, girls, I\'m an actress and this big bad teacher of yours is a very old pal of mine. He isn\'t such a bad sort really, you know," and she put her arm round my shoulders.

"See her little game, girls?" I said. "Do you notice that this woman from a disreputable profession is making advances to me? She really wants me to kiss her, you know. She—" But Dorothy shoved a piece of chalk into my mouth.

What a day we had! Dorothy stayed all day, and by four o\'clock she knew all the big girls by their Christian names. She insisted on their calling her Dorothy. She even tried[Pg 178] to talk their dialect, and they screamed at her attempt to say "Guid nicht the noo."

In the afternoon I got her to sing and play; then she danced a ragtime, and in a few minutes she had the whole crowd ragging up and down the floor.

She stayed to tea, and we reminisced about London. Dear old Dorothy! What a joy it was to see her again, but how dull will school be tomorrow! Ah, well, it is a workaday world, and the butterflies do not come out every day. If Dorothy could read that sentence she would purse up her pretty lips and say, "Butterfly, indeed, you old bluebottle!" The dear child!

*         *         *

The school to-day was like a ballroom the "morning after." The bairns sat and talked about Dorothy, and they talked in hushed tones as about one who is dead.

"Please, sir," asked Violet, "will she come back again?"

"I\'m afraid not," I answered.

"Please, sir, you should marry her, and then she\'ll always be here."

"She loves another man, Vi," I said [Pg 179]ruefully, and when Vi whispered to Katie Farmer, "What a shame!" I felt very sad. For the moment I loved Dorothy, but it was mere sentimentalism, Dorothy and I could never love, we are too much of the pal to each other for emotion to enter.

"She is very pretty," said Peggy Smith.

"Very," I assented.

"P—please, sir, you—you could marry her if you really tried?" said Violet. She had been thinking hard for a bit.

"And break the other man\'s heart!" I laughed.

Violet wrinkled her brows.

"Please, sir, it wouldn\'t matter for him, we don\'t know him."

"Why!" I cried, "he is a very old friend of mine!"

"Oh!" Violet gasped.

"Please, sir," she said after a while, "do you know any more actresses?"

I seized her by the shoulders and shook her.

"You wee bissom! You don\'t care a rap about me; all you want is that I should marry an actress. You want my wife to come and[Pg 180] teach you ragtimes and tangoes!" And she blushed guiltily.

*         *         *

Lawson came down to see me again to-night; he wanted to tell me of an inspector\'s visit to-day.

"Why don\'t you apply for an inspectorship?" he asked.

I lit my pipe.

"Various reasons, old fellow," I said. "For one thing I don\'t happen to know a fellow who knows a chap who lives next door to a woman whose husband works in the Scotch Education Department.

"Again, I\'m not qualified; I never took the Education Class at Oxford."

"Finally, I don\'t want the job."

"I suppose," said Lawson, "that lots of \'em get in by wire-pulling."

"Very probably, but some of them probably get in straight. Naturally, you cannot get geniuses by wire-pulling; the chap who uses influence to get a job is a third-rater always."

Lawson reddened.

"I pulled wires to get into my job," he said.

[Pg 181]

"That\'s all right," I said cheerfully, "I\'ve pulled wires all my days."

"But," I added, "I wouldn\'t do it again."

"Caught religion?"

"Not quite. The truth is that I have at last realised that you never get anything worth having if you\'ve got to beg for it."

"It\'s about the softest job I know, whether you have to beg for it or not. The only job that beats it for softness is the kirk," he said.

"I wouldn\'t exactly call it a soft job, Lawson; a rotten job, yes, but a soft job, no. Inspecting schools is half spying and half policing. It isn\'t supposed to be you know, but it is. You know as well as I do that every teacher starts guiltily whenever the inspector shoves his nose into the room. Nosing, that\'s what it is."

"You would make a fairly decent inspector," said Lawson.

"Thanks," I said, "the insinuation being that I could nose well, eh?"

"I didn\'t mean that. Suppose you had to examine my school how would you do it?"

"I would come in and sit down on a bench and say: \'Just imagine I am a new boy, and give me an idea of the ways of the school. I[Pg 182] warn you that my attention may wander. Fire away! But, I say, I hope you don\'t mind my finishing this pie; I had a rotten breakfast this morning.\'"

"Go on," said Lawson laughing.

"I wouldn\'t examine the kids at all. When you let them out for minutes I would have a crack with you. I would say something like this: \'I\'ve got a dirty job, but I must earn my screw in some way. I want to have a wee lecture all to myself. In the first place I don\'t like your discipline. It\'s inhuman to make kids attend the way you do. The natural desire of each boy in this room was to watch me put myself outside that pie, and not one looked at me.

"\'Then you are far too strenuous. You went from Arithmetic to Reading without a break. You should give them a five minutes chat between each lesson. And I think you have too much dignity. You would never think of dancing a ragtime on this floor, would you? I thought not. Try it, old chap. Apart from its merits as an antidote to dignity it is a first-rate liver stimulator.\' Hello! Where are you going? Time to take \'em in again?

[Pg 183]

"\'O, I say, I\'m your guest, uninvited guest, I admit, but that\'s no reason why you should take advantage of me. Man, my pipe isn\'t half smoked, and I have a cigarette to smoke yet. Come out and watch me play footer with the boys.\'"

"You think you would do all that," said Lawson slowly, "but you wouldn\'t you know. I remember a young inspector who came into my school with a blush on his face. \'I\'m a new inspector,\' he said very gingerly, \'and I don\'t know what I am supposed to do.\' A year later that chap came in like whirlwind, and called me \'young man.\' Man, you can\'t escape becoming smug and dignified if you are an inspector."

"I\'d have a darned good try, anyway," I said. "Getting any eggs just now?"

*         *         *

To-night I have been glancing at The Educa............