“T.”

Jack made a small murmurous sound as he finished.  Frank chuckled aloud.

“Pitches it in all right, doesn’t he?” he observed dispassionately.

“If it had been my governor—­” began Jack slowly.

“My dear man, it isn’t your governor; it’s mine.  And I’m dashed if there’s another man in the world who’d write such a letter as that nowadays.  It’s—­it’s too early-Victorian.  They’d hardly stand it at the Adelphi!  I could have put it so much better myself....  Poor old governor!”

“Have you answered it?”

“I ...  I forget.  I know I meant to....  No, I haven’t.  I remember now.  And I shan’t till I’m just off.”

“Well, I shall,” remarked Jack.

Frank turned a swift face upon him.

“If you do,” he said, with sudden fierce gravity, “I’ll never speak to you again.  I mean it.  It’s my affair, and I shall run it my own way.”

“But—­”

“I mean it.  Now! give me your word of honor—­”

“I—­”

“Your word of honor, this instant, or get out of my room!”

There was a pause.  Then: 

“All right,” said Jack.

Then there fell a silence once more.

(II)

The news began to be rumored about, soon after the auction that Frank held of his effects a couple of days later.  He carried out the scene admirably, entirely unassisted, even by Jack.

First, there appeared suddenly all over Cambridge, the evening before the sale, just as the crowds of undergraduates and female relations began to circulate about after tea and iced strawberries, a quantity of sandwich-men, bearing the following announcement, back and front: 

Trinity college, Cambridge.

The Hon.  Frank Guiseley
has pleasure in announcing that on
June 7th (Saturday)
at half-past ten a.m. precisely
in Rooms 1, Letter J, Great Court, Trinity College,
he will positively offer for

Sale by auction

The household effects, furniture, books, etc., of
the Hon. Frank Guiseley, including—­

A piano by Broadwood (slightly out of tune); a magnificent suite of drawing-room furniture, upholstered in damask, the sofa only slightly stained with tea; one oak table and another; a bed; a chest of drawers (imitation walnut, and not a very good imitation); a mahogany glass-fronted bookcase, containing a set of suggestive-looking volumes bound in faint colors, with white labels; four oriental mats; a portrait of a gentleman (warranted a perfectly respectable ancestor); dining-room suite (odd chairs); numerous engravings of places of interest and noblemen’s seats; a

Silver Cigarette-box and fifteen Cigarettes in it (Melachrino and Mixed American); a cuckoo-clock (without cuckoo); five walking-sticks; numerous suits of clothes (one lot suitable for Charitable Purposes); some books—­all very curious indeed—­comprising the works of an Eminent Cambridge Professor, and other scholastic luminaries, as well as many other articles.