When the servant came he said, “I want to send this note to the manager of the new temple, and it is important that he should have it to-night.  Be pleased, therefore, to take it to him and deliver it into his own hands; but I had rather you said nothing about it to the Mayor or Mayoress, nor to any of your fellow-servants.  Slip out unperceived if you can.  When you have delivered the note, ask for an answer at once, and bring it to me.”

So saying, he slipped a sum equal to about five shillings into the man’s hand.

The servant returned in about twenty minutes, for the temple was quite near, and gave a note to Hanky, which ran, “Your wishes shall be attended to without fail.”

“Good!” said Hanky to the man.  “No one in the house knows of your having run this errand for me?”

“No one, sir.”

“Thank you!  I wish you a very good night.”

CHAPTER XIII:  A VISIT TO THE PROVINCIAL DEFORMATORY AT FAIRMEAD

Having finished his early dinner, and not fearing that he should be either recognised at Fairmead or again enquired after from Sunch’ston, my father went out for a stroll round the town, to see what else he could find that should be new and strange to him.  He had not gone far before he saw a large building with an inscription saying that it was the Provincial Deformatory for Boys.  Underneath the larger inscription there was a smaller one—­one of those corrupt versions of my father’s sayings, which, on dipping into the Sayings of the Sunchild, he had found to be so vexatiously common.  The inscription ran:-

“When the righteous man turneth away from the righteousness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is a little naughty and wrong, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in righteousness.”  Sunchild Sayings, chap. xxii. v. 15.

The case of the little girl that he had watched earlier in the day had filled him with a great desire to see the working of one of these curious institutions; he therefore resolved to call on the headmaster (whose name he found to be Turvey), and enquire about terms, alleging that he had a boy whose incorrigible rectitude was giving him much anxiety.  The information he had gained in the forenoon would be enough to save him from appearing to know nothing of the system.  On having rung the bell, he announced himself to the servant as a Mr. Senoj, and asked if he could see the Principal.

Almost immediately he was ushered into the presence of a beaming, dapper-looking, little old gentleman, quick of speech and movement, in spite of some little portliness.

“Ts, ts, ts,” he said, when my father had enquired about terms and asked whether he might see the system at work.  “How unfortunate that you should have called on a Saturday afternoon.  We always have a half-holiday.  But stay—­yes—­that will do very nicely; I will send for them into school as a means of stimulating their refractory system.”