I understood his meaning perfectly. Not only was I the wrong applicant, he'd offered to pay me double the amount he was supposed to. Still, even if he was forced to revise my wages, I had to admit that one hundred a year was better than nothing.
Roberta turned to me. "I'm sorry, Mr Jones. Father gets a little mixed up sometimes, and I'm afraid we've wasted your time. I'll have Mrs Fairacre show you out."
I stared at her in shock. "But… the professor already offered me the position. I accepted!"
"He believed you to be someone else."
"No I didn't," called the professor.
"Father, please leave this to me."
"Roberta, I refuse to be pushed around like a creaky old handcart," said the professor. He spoke sharply, and I could tell his own temper was now beginning to fray. "The applicant you suggested was a pompous, stuck-up fool."
"He exceeded all of our requirements, and when you add his family connections—"
"I wouldn't have employed that buffoon if he offered to work for free!"
"So instead you seized on this poor fellow." Roberta whirled around to face me, and I understood how the Spanish had felt at Trafalgar when confronted by the formidable guns of the Victory. "Where were you employed previously?" she demanded.
"I—I managed the books for several businesses in my home town of Wickham."
She didn't look surprised. "You were not with a company in the city then?"
I remembered the advertisement and the requirements therein. "Alas no."
"I see." Her silence was as eloquent as any comment she might have made, and the withering look she gave her father would have felled a weaker man. "Tell me, of which professional accounting body are you a member?"
"I am not fortunate enough to belong to such, my lady."
"No membership and no experience." Roberta turned to her father in triumph. "Bad enough to hire the wrong candidate, but the man you selected is not even qualified. It seems Mr Jones applied for this position under false pretences, and that makes showing him the door all the easier."
"Now wait just a moment," said the professor, with a frown. "I believe this young man is ideal for the job. Why, he solved the riddle of the cube!"
Roberta gestured dismissively. "I did likewise as a child of seven. Would you hire a street urchin for this position?"
"If that was my choice, then yes indeed." The professor's voice rose. "And furthermore, you would live with it!"
"I would, would I?" demanded Roberta, advancing on him. "How is it you lived this long without me ending your miserable existence?"
"I rue the day you were born!" cried the professor. "You are nothing but a vicious harpy plaguing my household and sucking the very life from my bones!"
"You don't have any life, you withered old goat!" shouted Roberta, bunching her fists.
The professor didn't back down, and with a feeling of horror I realised they might actually come to blows. "I'll do the job for fifty a year," I cried.
Mid-argument, they ceased shouting at each other and turned to look at me.
"I mean it," I said. "I know I lack the desired qualifications, but—"
"When can you start?" asked the professor.
"Immediately, sir. This very minute!"
"Excellent. Sign here please." The Professor slid a sheet of manuscript across the desk and plucked a quill from the stand, passing it carefully so as not to mar the document with spilled ink.
I glanced down at the page and saw numerous paragraphs in legal boilerplate. I signed at the foot of the document, and the professor blotted the page and folded it in two, tucking it away in a desk drawer.
"There now. That's all done," said Roberta calmly.
Neither of them showed any signs of the rage which they'd exhibited just seconds earlier, and I looked from one to the other in total confusion. Then, having recalled that my name, the date, and wages of precisely fifty pounds a year had already been filled out on the contract, I realised that I had, indeed, been done.
– — Ω — –
I was still musing over the savage cut to my wages when Roberta took my elbow. "Come, Mr Jones. I'll show you to your room."
It seemed to me that Mrs Fairacre, the housekeeper, would be more suited to that task, but I wasn't going to argue. I had just been outmanoeuvred by a master tactician, and I wanted to know more of Roberta Twickham.
I followed her further down the hallway until we reached a narrow wooden staircase rising from the left, where Roberta bid me lead the way. We climbed flight after flight, turning at regular intervals, until we emerged on the top floor. Here there were two doors, side by side.
I was flushed and a little out of breath after the climb, but I noticed Roberta had not been affected in the slightest.
"One is a store room of sorts, while the other is yours," said Roberta, and she pushed open the left-hand door.
The ceiling had a sharp incline, nestled as it was just beneath the sloping roof of the house, but the room itself was generous. There was a desk, a bookcase with numerous well-used volumes, and a trim-looking bed in the centre. And there, sitting in the middle of the bed, was my own suitcase, battered and much-used.
"I had your things brought over," said Roberta. "I hope you don't mind."
I shook my head, for I'd been dreading a return to my previous lodgings. "That was good of you." At the time I didn't question how she knew where I'd been staying, and exactly how much she and the professor had learned of my past before they hired me. No, I was merely grateful.
Roberta crossed to the sloping window, and as she stood there, illuminated by the afternoon sunshine, I took the opportunity to study her at length. She was a sturdy, well-built sort and her face was more rounded than classic oval, but pretty all the
