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.

"Good!" said Hasbrouck, when the "Jimaboy Column" in the Sunday paper
began to be commented on and quoted; and he made Jimaboy an offer that
seemed like sudden