He reached up and jerked the gas-jet to a different angle. The flame lit,
through its nicked, pale-pink globe, a bedroom cramped in size and meagre
in furnishings: a narrow bed, dressed to look like a lounge; two stiff-
backed oak chairs, not lately varnished; a bookshelf overhead, with some
dozen of the more indispensable aids to our tongue's literature. The table
at which he sat was one of plain deal, covered with some Oriental-seeming
fabric which showed here and there inkspots that antedated his own pen. He
threw up this covering as it fell over the front edge of the table, pulled
out a drawer, laid a sheet of paper in the bettered light, and uncorked a
black-ink bottle.

"Dear Arthur," he began.

He looked across to the other chair, with its broken spindles and
obfuscated varnish. With things as he wanted them, his correspondent would
be sitting there and letter-writing would be unnecessary.

"Dear Arthur," he repeated aloud, and set himself to a general sketch of
the new land and the "lay" of it.

"Three-quarters of them are of course girls," he presently found himself
writing, "which is the common proportion almost everywhere, I presume,
except in engineering and dentistry. However, there are four or five men.
I've been pretty careful, and they still treat me with respect. I'm afraid
my course is regarded as a 'snap.' Everybody, it seems, can grasp English
literature (and produce it). And almost anybody, I begin to fear, can teach
it. Judging, that is, from the pay. I'm afraid the good folks at Freeford
will find themselves pinched for another year still."

He glanced across toward the pile of corrected themes. He felt that not