"I have heard nothing," said Graves. "I—I don't understand. If he writes of course I'll go."
"You'll jolly well gug-gug-go, any old how, or we'll carry you down," cried Guggers in a menacing voice, looking down at Graves from his six-foot-three of muscle and bone.
Graves looked round him helplessly. What was he to do? Could he disown this uncle? Should he explain that the whole thing was an invention, and that he had never possessed a rich uncle in Australia? Was it possible that by some curious trick there really was a Josiah Williams, Australian millionaire and philanthropist? If these men would only go and leave him alone to think!
Then suddenly there presented itself to his mind the other question: what would Josiah Williams be like? Would he be hopelessly unpresentable? Would he humiliate him, Reginald Graves, and render his subsequent years at St. Joseph's intolerable? How he wished these fellows would go!
CHAPTER XIII
OXFORD'S WELCOME TO BINDLE
I
At three o'clock on the following day the down platform at Oxford station presented an almost gala appearance. Not only were the men of St. Joseph's there, but hundreds of undergraduates from other colleges, with rattles, whistles, horns, flags, and every other attribute of great rejoicing.
Outside the station was a carriage with four horses, a piebald, a skewbald, a white, and another horse that seemed to have set out in life with a determination to be pink. Tom Little had himself selected the animals with elaborate care.