becoming formality they seated themselves in
face of the public. On tables before them were exposed a considerable number of
well-bound books, shortly to be distributed among the collegians, who gazed in
that direction with speculative eyes.
    Among the general concourse might have been discovered two or three
representatives of the wage-earning multitude which Kingsmill depended upon for
its prosperity, but their presence was due to exceptional circumstances; the
college provided for proletarian education by a system of evening classes, a
curriculum necessarily quite apart from that followed by the regular students.
Kingsmill, to be sure, was no nurse of Toryism; the robust employers of labour
who sent their sons to Whitelaw - either to complete a training deemed
sufficient for an active career, or by way of transition-stage between school
and university - were for the most part avowed Radicals, in theory scornful of
privilege, practically supporters of that mode of freedom which regards life as
a remorseless conflict. Not a few of the young men (some of these the hardest
and most successful workers) came from poor, middleclass homes, whence, but for
Sir Job's foundation, they must have set forth into the world with no better
equipment of knowledge than was supplied by some academy of the old type: a
glance distinguished such students from the well-dressed and well-fed offspring
of Kingsmill plutocracy. The note of the assembly was something other than
refinement; rather, its high standard of health, spirits, and comfort - the
characteristic of Capitalism. Decent reverence for learning, keen appreciation
of scientific power, warm liberality of thought and sentiment within appreciable
limits, enthusiasm for economic, civic, national ideals, - such attributes were
abundantly discoverable in each serried row. From the expanse of countenances
beamed a boundless self-satisfaction. To be connected in any way with Whitelaw
formed a subject of pride, seeing that here was the sturdy outcome of the most
modern educational endeavour, a noteworthy instance of what Englishmen can do
for themselves, unaided by bureaucratic machinery. Every student who achieved
distinction in to-day's class lists was felt to bestow a share of his honour
upon each spectator who applauded him.
    With occasional adjustment of his eye-glasses, and smiling his smile of
modest tolerance, Mr. Warricombe surveyed the crowded hall. His connection with
the town was not intimate, and he could discover few faces that were familiar to
him. A native and, till of late, an inhabitant of Devon, he had come to reside
on his property near Kingsmill because it seemed to him that the education of
his children would be favoured by a