Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 11.pdf/67

 Mr. Huss, whose lethargy had now departed, displayed himself feverishly anxious to talk about the school. "There are points I must make clear," he said, "vital points," and so a meeting was arranged for half-past nine. This would give a full hour before the arrival of the doctors.

"He feels that in a way it will be his testament, so to speak," said Mr. Farr. "Naturally he has his own ideas about the future of the school. We all have. I would be the last person to suggest that he could say anything about Woldingstanton that would not be well worth hearing. Some of us may have heard most of it before, and be better able to discount some of his assertions. But that under the present circumstances is neither here nor there."

Matters in the confined space of Sea View were not nearly so strained as Mr. Huss had feared. The prospect of an operation was not without its agreeable side to Mrs. Croome. Possibly she would have preferred that the subject should have been Mrs. rather than Mr. Huss, but it was clear that she made no claim to dictate upon this point. Her demand for special fees to meet the inconveniences of the occasion had been met quite liberally by Mr. Huss. And there was a genuine appreciation of order and method in Mrs. Croome; she was a furious spring-cleaner, a hurricane tidier-up, her feeling for the discursive state of Mrs. Huss's hair was almost as involuntary as a racial animosity; and the swift dexterous prep-