Accordingly, they breathed softly for a continuous week, and carefully avoided personal collisions with the postman. But temporary barricades are poor defenses at the best. One day as they were stealthily scurrying out to luncheon—they had acquired the stealthy habit to perfection by this time—they ran plump into the laden mail carrier in the lower hall.
"Hello!" said he; "you are just the people I've been looking for. I have a lot of letters and postal cards for The Post-Graduate School of something or other, 506 Hayward. Do you know anything about it?"
They exchanged glances. Isobel's said, "Are you going to make me tell the fib?" and Jimaboy's said, "Help!"
"I—er—I guess maybe they belong to us"—it was the man who weakened. "At least, it was our advertisement that brought them. Much obliged, I'm sure." And a breathless minute later they were back in their rooms with the fateful and fearfully bulky packet on the desk between them and such purely physical and routine things as luncheon quite forgotten.
"James Augustus Jimaboy! What have you done?" demanded the accusing angel.
"Well, somebody had to say something, and you wouldn't say it," retorted Jimaboy.
"Jimmy, did you want me to lie?"
"That's what you wanted me to do, wasn't it? But perhaps you think that one lie, more or less, wouldn't cut any figure in my case."
"Jimmy, dear, don't be horrid. You know perfectly well that your curiosity to see what is in those letters was too much for you."
Jimaboy walked to the window and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. It was their first quarrel, and being unfamiliar with the weapons of that warfare, he did not know which one to draw next. And the one he did draw was a tin dagger, crumpling under the blow.