Volume IX Part 25 (2/2)
But sober second thought came after a while to relieve the panic pressure. 506 Hayward Avenue was a small apartment-house, with a dozen or more tenants, lodgers, or light housekeepers, like the Jimaboys. All they would have to do would be to breathe softly and make no mention of the Post-Graduate School of W. B. Then the other tenants would never know, and the postman would never know. Of course, the non-delivery of the mail might bring troublesome inquiry upon the _Times_ advertising department, but, as Jimaboy remarked maliciously, that was none of their funeral.
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.
”h.e.l.lo!” 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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.
”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 repet.i.tion.
”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 ma.s.sed ranks of anxious inquirers, and finally came to answering some of the choicest of the letters in print.
<script>