boredom, Glossop drove me from the house, so that it came about
that, at half past nine, the time at which the affair began, I was
patrolling the gravel in front of the porch.

It was the practice of the staff of Sanstead House School to
assemble after dinner in Mr Abney's study for coffee. The room was
called the study, but it was really more of a master's common
room. Mr Abney had a smaller sanctum of his own, reserved
exclusively for himself.

On this particular night he went there early, leaving me alone
with Glossop. It is one of the drawbacks of the desert-island
atmosphere of a private school that everybody is always meeting
everybody else. To avoid a man for long is impossible. I had been
avoiding Glossop as long as I could, for I knew that he wanted to
corner me with a view to a heart-to-heart talk on Life Insurance.

These amateur Life Insurance agents are a curious band. The world
is full of them. I have met them at country-houses, at seaside
hotels, on ships, everywhere; and it has always amazed me that
they should find the game worth the candle. What they add to their
incomes I do not know, but it cannot be very much, and the trouble
they have to take is colossal. Nobody loves them, and they must
see it; yet they persevere. Glossop, for instance, had been trying
to buttonhole me every time there was a five minutes' break in the
day's work.

He had his chance now, and he did not mean to waste it. Mr Abney
had scarcely left the room when he began to exude pamphlets and
booklets at every pocket.