“Are you chaps writing a story?” he asked that evening as he departed to his bridge.
“Yes,” “No,” the twins answered simultaneously, then Tod answered with some decision: “No, Uncle Frank, we’re writing letters, business letters, that’s all.”
“Dear me,” their uncle replied, much impressed, and, having a peace-loving and incurious disposition, he asked no further questions and was soon contentedly playing a “no trumps” hand with conspicuous success.
A day or two later the headmaster of Harchester sighed gently as he found beside his plate at breakfast another bulky epistle from the anxious-minded Mr. T. Jones. This time that gentleman did not content himself with generalities; he made the most searching inquiries as to the disposition of the aforesaid Mr. Mannock.
After thanking the headmaster of Harchester for his “polite letter” (the headmaster raised his eyebrows as he reached this phrase), Mr. Jones continued:
“I fear that I cannot fall in with your suggestion of a private boarding-house for my dear nephew. In the first place it is too expensive, and in the second place I wish him to go into Mr. Mannock’s house if you can satisfy me that he is of the considerate and forbearing disposition that a man placed in his responsible position ought to be. I am pressed for time, as I sail on May 1st for Bombay, and an early answer will greatly oblige.
“Yours truly,
“T. Jones.”
Tod and Peter had the very greatest fun in filling in the form of application. They had long ago decided that the youthful Archibald was to enter on the Classical side, that he was destined for the Church, that his father was “deceased,” but as to the late gentleman’s profession they squabbled. Peter wanted Army or Indian Civil; Tod was in favor of Navy or Church; when Peter suddenly recollected that there were “lists and things” in most of the recognized professions and that an “inquisitive old buffer like the Pot would be certain to look him up.”
Finally they decided that the deceased one had better be a “merchant.” Peter wanted to add “prince,” but Tod, the far-seeing, pointed out that such affluence would hardly coincide with an objection to one of the smaller boarding-houses on the score of expense.
Finally they despatched their entrance form “to the bursar,” elaborately filled up in the scholarly handwriting of Mr. Theopompus Jones, the handwriting that so puzzled the Principal of Harchester by its haunting resemblance to that of one of his masters.