"It has been my impression all along that curiosity was a feminine weakness," he observed to the windowpanes.
"James Jimaboy! You know better than that! You've Said a dozen times in your stories that it was just the other way about—you know you have. And, besides, I didn't let the cat out of the bag."
Here was where Jimaboy's sense of humor came in. He turned on her quickly. She was the picture of righteous indignation trembling to tears. Whereupon he took her in his arms, laughing over her as she might have wept over him.
"Isn't this rich!" he gasped. "We—we built this thing on our specialty, and here we are qualifying like cats and dogs for our great mission to a quarrelsome world. Listen, Bella, dear, and I'll tell you why I weakened. It wasn't curiosity, or just plain, every-day scare. There is sure to be money in some of these letters, and it must be returned. Also, the other people must be told that it was only a joke."
"B-but we've broken our record and qu-quarreled!" she sobbed.
"Never mind," he comforted; "maybe that was necessary, too. Now we can add another course to the curriculum and call it the Exquisite Art of Making Up. Let's get to work on these things and see what we are in for."
They settled down to it in grim determination, cutting out the down-town luncheon and munching crackers and cheese while they opened and read and wrote and returned money and explained and re-explained in deadly and wearisome repetition.
"My land!" said Jimaboy, stretching his arms over his head, when Isobel got up to light the lamps, "isn't the credulity of the race a beautiful thing to contemplate? Let's hope this furore will die down as suddenly as it jumped up. If it doesn't, I'm going to make Hasbrouck furnish us a stenographer and pay the postage."
But it did not die down. For a solid fortnight they did little else than write letters and postal cards to anxious applicants, and by the end of the two weeks Jimaboy was starting up in his bed of nights to rave out the threadbare formula of explanation: "Dear Madam: The ad. you saw in the Sunday Times was not an ad.; it was a joke. There is no Post-Graduate School of W. B. in all the world. Please don't waste your time and ours by writing any more letters."
The first rift in the cloud was due to the good offices of Hasbrouck. He saw matter of public interest in the swollen jest and threw the columns of the Sunday Times open to Jimaboy. Under the racking pressure, the sentimentalist fired volley upon volley of scathing ridicule into the massed ranks of anxious inquirers, and finally came to answering some of the choicest of the letters in print.