“I’ll bequeath you my boarding house.  You’ll find it comfortable and not further from the school than a good constitutional.  Mrs. Williamson is the dearest soul alive; and she is one of those old-fashioned cooks who feed you on feasts of fat things and whose price is above rubies.

“Her husband, Robert, or Bob, as he is commonly called despite his sixty years, is quite a character in his way.  He is an amusing old gossip, with a turn for racy comment and a finger in everybody’s pie.  He knows everything about everybody in Lindsay for three generations back.

“They have no living children, but Old Bob has a black cat which is his especial pride and darling.  The name of this animal is Timothy and as such he must always be called and referred to.  Never, as you value Robert’s good opinion, let him hear you speaking of his pet as ‘the cat,’ or even as ‘Tim.’  You will never be forgiven and he will not consider you a fit person to have charge of the school.

“You shall have my room, a little place over the kitchen, with a ceiling that follows the slant of the roof down one side, against which you will bump your head times innumerable until you learn to remember that it is there, and a looking glass which will make one of your eyes as small as a pea and the other as big as an orange.

“But to compensate for these disadvantages the supply of towels is generous and unexceptionable; and there is a window whence you will daily behold an occidental view over Lindsay Harbour and the gulf beyond which is an unspeakable miracle of beauty.  The sun is setting over it as I write and I see such a sea of glass mingled with fire as might have figured in the visions of the Patmian seer.  A vessel is sailing away into the gold and crimson and pearl of the horizon; the big revolving light on the tip of the headland beyond the harbour has just been lighted and is winking and flashing like a beacon,

“’O’er the foam
Of perilous seas in faerie lands forlorn.’”

“Wire me if you can come; and if you can, report for duty on the twenty-third of May.”

Mr. Marshall, Senior, came in, just as Eric was thoughtfully folding up his letter.  The former looked more like a benevolent old clergyman or philanthropist than the keen, shrewd, somewhat hard, although just and honest, man of business that he really was.  He had a round, rosy face, fringed with white whiskers, a fine head of long white hair, and a pursed-up mouth.  Only in his blue eyes was a twinkle that would have made any man who designed getting the better of him in a bargain think twice before he made the attempt.

It was easily seen that Eric must have inherited his personal beauty and distinction of form from his mother, whose picture hung on the dark wall between the windows.  She had died while still young, when Eric was a boy of ten.  During her lifetime she had been the object of the passionate devotion of both her husband and son; and the fine, strong, sweet face of the picture was a testimony that she had been worthy of their love and reverence.  The same face, cast in a masculine mold, was repeated in Eric; the chestnut hair grew off his forehead in the same way; his eyes were like hers, and in his grave moods they held a similar expression, half brooding, half tender, in their depths.