Page:Duer Miller--The charm school.djvu/41

 He made just the effect he wanted to. Mr. Johns was so staggered at the sum that he was silent for an instant, and while he was gathering his powers together the young man went on:

"You see, Mr. Johns, a very extraordinary thing has just happened to me."

"You've lost your pocketbook, I suppose."

"No. Queerer than that. I've inherited a girls' school." "A girls' school! What school? Not— What school?"

"The Bevans School."

"God bless my soul!" said Johns in a tone of such complete surrender that Austin sat down without being asked.

"Mrs. Bevans was my aunt by marriage, and, as she died without a will and I am her nearest of kin, the school is mine."

"Oh," said Johns. "I see! If she had deliberately left it you, she ought to have ended her days in a lunatic-asylum."

"You mean I am not a fit person to manage a girls' school?"

"About the most unfit I ever saw."

"Mr. Johns," said Austin, seriously, "there you are absolutely wrong—as I will prove to you. I am a peculiarly suitable person, infinitely more so, as a matter of fact, than