“How charming of Beverley!” Miss Rachel said.
“The best what?” she enquired, but I cannot have heard her, for I made no answer.
I learn that sometimes she thinks it was probably cakes and at other times fives balls, which she knows to be in great demand at that school. I shall not be surprised if Miss Rachel sends a dozen of the best to Beverley.
7. How to Write a Collins
I note that the dozen of the best shared by these two odd creatures seems to have made them pals again. The proof is that though they began the new half by messing with other youths they are now once more messing together.
“That priceless young cub, W. W.,” occurs in one letter of Tintinnabulum’s.
“W. W. is the lad for me,” he says in the next.
Again, I have a note of thanks for hospitality from W. W. in which he remarks, “Tintinnabulum is as ripping as ever.” This, however, is to be discounted, as, though the letter is signed W. W. Daly, I recognise in it another hand, I recognise this other hand so clearly that I can add a comment in brackets (3d.).
Yes, I can do so (because of a game I have long been playing), but any other person would be deceived, just as m’ tutor was at first deceived by the epistles on the favourite walk. He told me that these were so fragrant of W. W. that he had thought Tintinnabulum must be the copy-cat. Indeed, thus it was held until W. W. nobly made confession.
What I must face is this, that Tintinnabulum, being (alas) an artist, has been inside W. W. Not only so, he has since his return to school been inside at least half a dozen other boys, searching for Collinses for them.