I went to Tintinnabulum’s bedchamber and told him I could not rest until I knew what he had been doing to that lady. In the days of Neil it had been a room of glamour, especially the bed therein, where were performed nightly between 6.15 and 6.30 precisely, the brighter plays of Shakespeare, two actors, but not a sign of them anywhere unless you became suspicious of the hump in the coverlet. Never have the plays gone with greater merriment since Mr. Shakespeare made up “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in his Judith’s hump.
No glamour of course in the room of a public schoolboy, unless it was provided by his discarded raiment, which lay like islands on the floor. However, I found Tintinnabulum in affable humour, sitting tailor-like in bed, dressed in half of his pyjamas, reading a book and eating an apple. He had doubtless found the apple or the book just as he was about to enter the other half of his night attire.
“What could I have been doing to her?” he asked invitingly. (He likes to be hunted.)
The robing of him having been completed, I said with humorous intent, “You may have been luring her into matrimony against her better judgment.”
“She is nuts on him,” Tintinnabulum said, taking my remark seriously.
“But you can’t have had anything to do with it?”
He nodded, with his teeth in the apple.
“Of course this is nonsense,” I said, though with a sinking, “you don’t know her.”
“I didn’t need to know her for a thing like that.”
I tried sarcasm. “I should have thought it was essential.” He shook his head.