seems to be a sort of hobby of his. You can't stop him."

But it was not until the middle of preparation that the great idea
flashed upon Dunstable's mind.

It was the simplicity of the thing that took his breath away. That and
its possibilities. This was the idea. Why not start a Lines Trust in
the school? An agency for supplying lines at moderate rates to all who
desired them? There did not seem to be a single flaw in the scheme. He
and Linton between them could turn out enough material in a week to
give the Trust a good working capital. And as for the risk of
detection when customers came to show up the goods supplied to them,
that was very slight. As has been pointed out before, there was
practically one handwriting common to the whole school when it came to
writing lines. It resembled the movements of a fly that had fallen
into an ink-pot, and subsequently taken a little brisk exercise on a
sheet of foolscap by way of restoring the circulation. Then, again,
the attitude of the master to whom the lines were shown was not likely
to be critical. So that everything seemed in favour of Dunstable's
scheme.

Linton, to whom he confided it, was inclined to scoff at first, but
when he had had the beauties of the idea explained to him at length,
became an enthusiastic supporter of the scheme.

"But," he objected, "it'll take up all our time. Is it worth it? We
can't spend every afternoon sweating away at impots for other people."

"It's all right," said Dunstable, "I've thought of that. We shall need
to pitch in pretty hard for about a week or ten days. That will give