d half round and looked quietly
and steadily at the Wizard of Finance. To both their minds it was
perfectly plain that an honourable bargain was being struck.

"Yes, Mr. Tomlinson," said the president, as they emerged from the
building, "no doubt you begin to realize our unhappy position. Money,
money, money," he repeated half-musingly. "If I had the money I'd have
that whole building down and dismantled in a fortnight."

From the central building the three passed to the museum building,
where Tomlinson was shown a vast skeleton of a Diplodocus Maximus, and
was specially warned not to confuse it with the Dinosaurus Perfectus,
whose bones, however, could be bought if anyone, any man of large
heart; would come to the university and say straight out, "Gentlemen,
what can I do for you?" Better still, it appeared the whole museum
which was hopelessly antiquated, being twenty-five years old, could be
entirely knocked down if a sufficient sum was forthcoming; and its
curator, who was as ancient as the Dinosaurus itself, could be
dismissed on half-pay if any man had a heart large enough for the
dismissal.

From the museum they passed to the library, where there were
full-length portraits of more founders and benefactors in long red
robes, holding scrolls of paper, and others sitting holding pens and
writing on parchment, with a Greek temple and a thunderstorm in the
background.

And here again it appeared that the crying need of the moment was for
someone to come to the university and say, "Gentlemen, what can I do
for you?" On which the whole library, for it was twenty years old and
out of date, might be blown up with dynamite and carted away.

But at all this the hopes of Tomlinson sank lower and lower. The red
robes and the scrolls were too much for him.

From the library they passed to the tall buildings that housed the
faculty of industrial and mechanical science. And here again the same
pitiful lack of money was everywhere apparent. For example, in the
physical science department there was a mass of apparatus for which the
university was unable to afford suitable premises, and in the chemical
department there were vast premises for which the university was unable
to buy apparatus, and so on. Indeed it was part of Dr. Boomer's method
to get himself endowed first with premises too big for the apparatus,
and then by appealing to public spirit to call for enough apparatus to
more than fill the premises, by means of whi