Part 11 (2/2)
NO MORE WORRY!
PEACE, PERFECT PEACE!
WHY DO LINES WHEN WE DO THEM FOR YOU?
Then came the real prospectus:
The Locksley Lines Supplying Trust, Ltd. has been inst.i.tuted to meet the growing demand for lines and other impositions. While there are masters at our public schools there will always be lines.
At Locksley the crop of masters has always flourished--and still flourishes--very rankly, and the demand for lines has greatly taxed the powers of those to whom has been a.s.signed the task of supplying them.
It is for the purpose of affording relief to these that the Lines Trust has been formed. It is proposed that all orders for lines shall be supplied out of our vast stock. Our charges are moderate, and vary between threepence and sixpence per hundred lines. The higher charge is made for Greek impositions, which, for obvious reasons, entail a greater degree of labour on our large and efficient staff of writers.
All orders, which will be promptly executed, should be forwarded to Mr. P. A. Dunstable, 6 College Grounds, Locksley, or to Mr. C. J.
Linton, 10 College Grounds, Locksley. _Payment must be inclosed with order, or the latter will not be executed._ Under no conditions will notes of hand or cheques be accepted as legal tender. There is no trust about us except the name.
Come in your thousands. We have lines for all. If the Trust's stock of lines were to be placed end to end it would reach part of the way to London. ”You pay the threepence. We do the rest.”
Then a blank s.p.a.ce, after which came a few ”unsolicited testimonials”:
”Lower Fifth” writes: ”I was set two hundred lines of Virgil on Sat.u.r.day last at one o'clock. Having laid in a supply from your agency I was enabled to show them up at five minutes past one.
The master who gave me the commission was unable to restrain his admiration at the rapidity and neatness of my work. You may make what use of this you please.”
”Dexter's House” writes: ”Please send me one hundred (100) lines from _Aeneid, Book Two_. Mr. Dexter was so delighted with the last I showed him that he has asked me to do some more.”
”Enthusiast” writes: ”Thank you for your Greek numerals. Day took them without blinking. So beautifully were they executed that I can hardly believe even now that I did not write them myself.”
There could be no doubt about the popularity of the Trust. It caught on instantly.
Nothing else was discussed in the form-rooms at the quarter to eleven interval, and in the houses after lunch it was the sole topic of conversation. Dunstable and Linton were bombarded with questions and witticisms of the near personal sort. To the latter they replied with directness, to the former evasively.
”What's it all _about?_” someone would ask, fluttering the leaflet before Dunstable's unmoved face.
”You should read it carefully,” Dunstable would reply. ”It's all there.”
”But what are you playing at?”
”We tried to make it clear to the meanest intelligence. Sorry you can't understand it.”
While at the same time Linton, in his form-room, would be explaining to excited inquirers that he was sorry, but it was impossible to reply to their query as to who was running the Trust. He was not at liberty to reveal business secrets. Suffice it that there the lines were, waiting to be bought, and he was there to sell them. So that if anybody cared to lay in a stock, large or small, according to taste, would he kindly walk up and deposit the necessary coin?
But here the public showed an unaccountable disinclination to deal. It was gratifying to have acquaintances coming up and saying admiringly: ”You are an a.s.s, you know,” as if they were paying the highest of compliments--as, indeed, they probably imagined that they were. All this was magnificent, but it was not business. Dunstable and Linton felt that the whole att.i.tude of the public towards the new enterprise was wrong. Locksley seemed to regard the Trust as a huge joke, and its prospectus as a literary _jeu d'esprit_.
In fact, it looked very much as if--from a purely commercial point of view--the great Lines Supplying Trust was going to be what is known in theatrical circles as a frost.
For two whole days the public refused to bite, and Dunstable and Linton, turning over the stacks of lines in their studies, thought gloomily that this world is no place for original enterprise.
Then things began to move.
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