“Might get you a visiting job, perhaps,” said Mr. Blendershin speculatively.  “Just read me those items again, Binks,” He listened attentively.  “Objects to religious teaching!—­Eh?” He stopped the reading by a gesture, “That’s nonsense.  You can’t have everything, you know.  Scratch that out.  You won’t get a place in any middle-class school in England if you object to religious teaching.  It’s the mothers—­bless ’em!  Say nothing about it.  Don’t believe—­who does?  There’s hundreds like you, you know—­hundreds.  Parsons—­all sorts.  Say nothing about it—­”

“But if I’m asked?”

“Church of England.  Every man in this country who has not dissented belongs to the Church of England.  It’ll be hard enough to get you anything without that.”

“But—­” said Mr. Lewisham.  “It’s lying.”

“Legal fiction,” said Mr. Blendershin.  “Everyone understands.  If you don’t do that, my dear chap, we can’t do anything for you.  It’s Journalism, or London docks.  Well, considering your experience,—­say docks.”

Lewisham’s face flushed irregularly.  He did not answer.  He scowled and tugged at the still by no means ample moustache.

“Compromise, you know,” said Mr. Blendershin, watching him kindly.  “Compromise.”

For the first time in his life Lewisham faced the necessity of telling a lie in cold blood.  He glissaded from, the austere altitudes of his self-respect, and his next words were already disingenuous.

“I won’t promise to tell lies if I’m asked,” he said aloud.  “I can’t do that.”

“Scratch it out,” said Blendershin to the clerk.  “You needn’t mention it.  Then you don’t say you can teach drawing.”

“I can’t,” said Lewisham.

“You just give out the copies,” said Blendershin, “and take care they don’t see you draw, you know.”

“But that’s not teaching drawing—­”

“It’s what’s understood by it in this country,” said Blendershin.  “Don’t you go corrupting your mind with pedagogueries.  They’re the ruin of assistants.  Put down drawing.  Then there’s shorthand—­”

“Here, I say!” said Lewisham.

“There’s shorthand, French, book-keeping, commercial geography, land measuring—­”

“But I can’t teach any of those things!”

“Look here,” said Blendershin, and paused.  “Has your wife or you a private income?”

“No,” said Lewisham.

“Well?”

A pause of further moral descent, and a whack against an obstacle.  “But they will find me out,” said Lewisham.

Blendershin smiled.  “It’s not so much ability as willingness to teach, you know.  And they won’t find you out.  The sort of schoolmaster we deal with can’t find anything out.  He can’t teach any of these things himself—­and consequently he doesn’t believe they can be taught.  Talk to him of pedagogics and he talks of practical experience.  But he puts ’em on his prospectus, you know, and he wants ’em on his time-table.  Some of these subjects—­There’s commercial geography, for instance.  What is commercial geography?”