It was a broiling afternoon. The summer term had once more come round, and Jack, with his coat off, was sitting in a shady corner of the schoolroom wrestling with a letter to Queen Mab.
"I write to her nearly every blessed week," he continued, "and the consequence is I've never got anything to say. I've told her how jolly it is to think that in four weeks' time we shall be at Brenlands again; and now I'm stuck, and I can't get any further."
"Have you told her how well you've been doing in cricket this season?"
"No."
"Well, I have; so it doesn't much matter. Look here! Raymond Fosberton's outside, and wants to see you."
"Oh, tell him to go to Bath!" answered Jack, making another stab at the ink-pot with his pen. "I want to finish this letter."
"No, come along," answered Valentine, laughing. "You must be civil to the fellow; he's been waiting about for nearly a quarter of an hour."
"Do him good," growled the scribe, reluctantly pitching his untidy epistle into a very disorderly desk. "He only comes here to show off. Just because he's in a lawyer's office, he thinks he's a big pot, and all he does is to write copies like a kid in the Lower School."
According to his own opinion, Raymond Fosberton had blossomed out into the full-blown man. He wore a light check suit of the very latest fashion, a rosebud adorned his button-hole, and he tapped the toe of his highly-polished, patent-leather boots with the point of a silver-mounted cane.
"Hallo!" he exclaimed; "what the dickens d'you want to keep a chap waiting so long for? I can tell you my time's more valuable than yours. Look here! I'm sorry I haven't been able to ask you boys to come and see me before, but nearly every night since I've been here I've been engaged. However, I want you to get leave to come and have tea at my rooms on Wednesday, and after that we'll go to the fair. You know what I mean. It's held once a year in a big field on the other side of the town; there are shows, and round-abouts, and all that sort of thing."