the seventh heaven. I _had got the sack_! _I_ should never teach
him quadratic equations again. I should turn my back forever
upon those hateful walls and still more abominated playing-
fields. And I was not leaving my prison, as I had done once or
twice before, in order to continue my servitude elsewhere. I was
free. I could go out into the sunshine and look my fellow-man in
the face, free from the haunting, demoralising sense of
incapacity. I was free. Until that urchin's shriek I had not
realised it. My teeth chattered with the thrill.

I was fortunately out of school the second hour. I employed most
of it in balancing myself. A perfectly reasonable creature, I
visited the chief. He was a chubby, rotund man, with a circular
body and a circular visage, and he wore great circular gold
spectacles. He looked like a figure in the Third Book of Euclid.
But his eyes sparkled like bits of glass in the sun.

"Well, Ordeyne?" he inquired, looking up from letters to parents.

"I have come to ask you to accept my resignation," said I. "I
would like you to release me at once."

"Come, come, things are not as bad as all that," said he,
kindly.

I looked stupidly at him for a moment.

"Of course I know you've got one or two troublesome forms," he
continued.