It has been well said that this is the age of the specialist.
Everybody, if they wish to leave the world a better and happier place
for their stay in it, should endeavour to adopt some speciality and
make it their own. Chapple's speciality was being late for breakfast.
He was late not once or twice, but every day. Sometimes he would
scramble in about the time of the second cup of coffee, buttoning his
waistcoat as he sidled to his place. Generally he would arrive just as
the rest of the house were filing out; when, having lurked hidden
until Mr. Seymour was out of the way, he would enter into private
treaty with Herbert, the factotum, who had influence with the cook,
for Something Hot and maybe a fresh brew of coffee. For there was
nothing of the amateur late-breakfaster about Chapple. Your amateur
slinks in with blushes deepening the naturally healthy hue of his
face, and, bolting a piece of dry bread and gulping down a cup of cold
coffee, dashes out again, filled more with good resolutions for the
future than with food. Not so Chapple. He liked his meals. He wanted a
good deal here below, and wanted it hot and fresh. Conscience had but
a poor time when it tried to bully Chapple. He had it weak in the
first round.

But there was one more powerful than Conscience--Mr. Seymour. He had
marked the constant lateness of our hero, and disapproved of it.

Thus it happened that Chapple, having finished an excellent breakfast
one morning some twenty minutes after everybody else, was informed as
he sat in the junior day-room trying, with the help of an illustrated
article in a boys' paper, to construct a handy model steam-engine out
of a reel of cotton and an old note-book--for his was in many ways a
giant brain--that Mr. Seymour would like to have a friendly chat with