One afternoon, Dick burst into the sitting room—they were at tea—with a couple of parcels; one, a small square like a box, the other, a larger and heavier one.
"Just come by the carrier," he said; "addressed to 'Drake Vernon, Esquire.' The little one is registered. The carrier acted as auxiliary postman, and wants a receipt."
Drake signed the paper absently, with a scrawl of the pen which Dick brought him, and Dick, glancing at the signature mechanically, said:
"Well, that's a rum way of writing 'Vernon'!"
Drake looked up from cutting the string of the small box, and frowned slightly.
"Give it me back, please," he said, rather sharply. "It isn't fair to write so indistinctly."
Dick handed the receipt form back, and Drake ran his pen quickly through the "Selbie" which he had scrawled unthinkingly, and wrote Drake Vernon in its place.
Dick took the altered paper unsuspectingly to the carrier.
"So kind of you to trouble, Mr. Vernon!" said Mrs. Lorton. "As if it mattered how you wrote! My poor father used to say that only the illiterate were careful of their handwriting, and that illegible caligraphy—it is caligraphy, is it not?—was a sign of genius."
"Then I must be one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived," said Drake.