Again the Pot was prompt and courteous, and by return the twins were gloating over another letter, which, however, again disappointed them by its brevity.
“Dear Sir (it ran),
“As your time in this country is indeed getting short, I would advise you at once to confer personally with Mr. Mannock as to whether he can find room for your nephew or not; for, in the event of his having no vacancy, you still may be enabled to place the boy in one of the other houses.”
“Oh, the shuffler!” Peter shouted indignantly. “The quibbler! The sanctimonious humbug! He thinks he’s diddled Theopompus Jones, does he? He’ll find out his mistake before very long; it’ll be Theopompus Jones has diddled him. I wouldn’t trust that man with a bad halfpenny. He can’t answer a straight question, that’s what he can’t do—and yet to hear him talk....”
“I say,” interrupted Tod, “suppose they send in the bill, what’ll we do?”
“You don’t propose we should pay it, do you, you young ass?” Peter returned scornfully. “They never send ’em in till just before term, sometimes not till after. Don’t you remember how the pater grumbled last autumn because it didn’t come, and he wanted everything settled up before he sailed?”
“So does Mr. Jones want it all settled before he sails,” Tod remarked gaily. “He ought to write to old Pig-Face to-night.”
This the dual Mr. Jones did, and, as before, received an answer by return of post from Mr. Mannock, who, strange to say, had just one vacancy, and expressed his willingness that Archibald Jones should fill that same. And Mr. T. Jones, refraining from further researches into the character of Mr. Mannock, wrote with his own scholarly hand, or rather hands, a letter which announced the pending arrival of Archibald.
By this time the holidays were nearly over, and the twins began to be somewhat anxious as to the termination of Mr. Jones’ correspondence with the authorities at Harchester School. But their good genius did not desert them at the last moment, for just the day before they left Wales, when they were at their wits’ end for a satisfactory ending to the episode, they came across the “List of Members” of their uncle’s club; and, idly turning over the leaves, Tod found that there were no fewer than thirteen members of the same surname as the anxious uncle of their creation and three of them had “T” for their initial. Instantly Tod’s resource was stimulated, and he despatched three letters in the most scholarly of handwritings to his headmaster, to Mr. Mannock, and to the bursar respectively, announcing his immediate departure for London and requesting that all future communications might be addressed to him at the club in question.
In his letter to Mr. Mannock, he informed him that Archibald would be sent one day earlier than that given for the return of the other boys, as he, Mr. Jones, would be so much occupied in arrangements for his voyage that he would be unable to give the boy the careful supervision his sensitive disposition and delicate health demanded.