"Even Granville couldn't help grinning at this.

"'Nonsense, Booms. I'm glad to say I know you three fellows well enough by this time to feel sure it wasn't one of you. I shouldn't have spoken to you about it if I had.'

"Booms seemed quite disappointed he wasn't to be made a martyr of after all.

"'You think I know all about it?' he said.

"'No, I don't; and if you'll just listen without running away with ridiculous notions, Booms,' said Granville, warming up a bit, 'I'll explain myself. Two letters during the last fortnight have been undoubtedly opened before I saw them. They both arrived between eight o'clock in the evening and nine next morning, and they both came from sporting correspondents of ours in the country, and contained information of a private nature intended for our paper the next day. In one case it was about a horse race, and in the other about an important football match. The letters were not tampered with for the purpose of giving information to any other papers, because we were still the only paper who gave the news, so the probability is some one who wanted to bet on the event has tried to get hold of the news beforehand.'

"'I never made a bet in my life,' said Booms.

"We couldn't help laughing at this, for the stories he tells us of his terrific sporting exploits when he goes out of an evening in his high collar would make you think he was the loudest betting man in London.

"Granville laughed too.

"'Better not begin,' he said, and then blushed very red, as it occurred to him he had made an unintentional pun. But we looked quite grave, and did not give any sign of having seen it, and that put him on his feet again.

"'It's not a comfortable thing to happen,' said he, 'and what I want to propose is that one or two of you should stay late for a night or two and see if you can find out how it occurs. There are one or two events coming off during the next few days about which we expect special communications, so that very likely whoever it is may try again. You must be very careful, and I shall have to leave you to use your discretion, for I'm so busy with the new Literary Supplement that I cannot stay myself.'

"Well, when he'd gone we had a consultation, and of course it ended in Waterford and me determining to sit up. Poor Booms's heart would break if he couldn't go 'on the mash' as usual; and though he tried to seem very much hurt that he was not to stay, we could see he was greatly relieved. Waterford and I were rather glad, as it happened, for we'd some work on hand it just suited us to get a quiet evening for.

"So I wrote a note to Miss Crisp. Don't get excited, old man; she's a very nice girl, but she's another's. [By the way, Jemima asks after you every time I meet her, which is once a week now; she's invited herself into our shorthand cla.s.s.] And after helping to rig old Booms up to the ninety-nines, which wasn't easy work, for his 'd.i.c.ky' kept twisting round to the side of his neck, and we had to pin it in three places before it would keep steady, I gave him the note and asked him would he ever be so kind as to take it round for me, as it was to ask Miss Crisp if she would go and keep my mother company during my absence.

"After that I thought we should never get rid of him. He insisted on overhauling every article of his toilet. At least four more pins were added to fix the restless d.i.c.ky in its place on his manly breast. We polished up his eye-gla.s.ses with wash-leather till the pewter nearly all rubbed off; we helped him roll his flannel shirt-sleeves up to the elbows for fear--horrible idea!--they should chance to peep out from below his cuffs; we devoted an anxious two minutes to the poising of his hat at the right angle, and then pa.s.sed him affectionately from one to the other to see he was all right. After which he went off, holding my letter carefully in his scented handkerchief and saying--dear gay deceiver!--that he envied us spending a cosy evening in that snug office by the fire!

"The work Waterford and I have on hand is--tell it not in Gath, old man, and don't scorn a fellow off the face of the earth--to try to write something that will get into the Literary Supplement. This supplement is a new idea of the editor's, and makes a sort of weekly magazine. He writes a lot of it himself, and we chip a lot of stuff for him out of other papers. The idea of having a shot at it occurred to us both independently, in a funny and rather humiliating way. It seems Waterford, without saying a word to me or anybody, had sat down and composed some lines on the 'Swallow'--appropriate topic for this season of the year. I at the same time, without saying a word to Waterford or anybody except mother, had sat down and, with awful groanings and wrestlings of mind, evolved a lucubration in prose on 'Ancient and Modern Athletic Sports.' Of course I crammed a lot of it up out of encyclopaedias and that sort of thing. It was the driest rot you ever read, and I knew it was doomed before I sent it in. But as it was written I thought I might try. So, as of course I couldn't send it in under my own name, I asked Miss Crisp if I might send it under hers.

The obliging little lady laughed and said, 'Yes,' but she didn't tell me at the same time that Waterford had come to her with his 'Swallow' and asked the very same thing. A rare laugh she must have had at our expense! Well, I sent mine in and Waterford sent in his.

"We were both very abstracted for the next few days, but little guessed our perturbation arose from the same cause. Then came the fatal Wednesday--the 'd.w.t.' day as we call it--for Granville always saves up his rejected addresses for us to 'decline with thanks' for Wednesdays.

There was a good batch of them this day, so Waterford and I took half each. I took a hurried skim through mine, but no 'Ancient and Modern Athletic Sports' were there. I concluded therefore Waterford had it.

Granville writes in the corner of each 'd.w.t.,' or 'd.w.t. note,' which means 'declined with thanks' pure and simple, or 'declined with thanks'

and a short polite note to be written at the same time stating that the sub-editor, while recognising some merit in the contribution, regretted it was not suitable for the Supplement. I polished off my pure and simple first, and then began to tackle the notes. About the fourth I came to considerably astonished me. It was a couple of mild sonnets on the 'Swallow,' with the name M.E. Crisp attached!

"'Hullo,' I said to Waterford, tossing the paper over to him, 'here's Miss Crisp writing some verses. I should have thought she could write better stuff than that, shouldn't you?'

"Waterford, very red in the face, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the paper and glanced at it.

"'Do you think they're so bad?' said he.

"'Frightful twaddle,' said I; 'fancy any one saying--'"

"The drowsy year from winter's sleep ye wake, Yet two of ye do not a summer make."

"'Well,' said he, grinning, 'you'd better tell her straight off it's bosh, and then she's not likely to make a fool of herself again. Hullo, though, I say,' he exclaimed, picking up a paper in front of him, every smudge and blot of which I knew only too well, 'why, she's at it again.

What's this?

"'"Ancient and Mod--" Why, it's in your writing; did you copy it out for her?'

"'I wrote that out, yes,' said I, feeling it my turn to colour up and look sheepish.

"Waterford glanced rapidly through the first few lines, and then said,--

"'Well, all I can say is, it's a pity she didn't stick to poetry. I'm sure the line about waking the drowsy year is a jolly sight better than this awful rot.'

"'Though we are not told so in so many words, we may reasonably conclude that athletic sports were not unpractised by Cain and Abel prior to the death of the latter!

"'As if they could have done it after!'

"'I never said they could,' I said, feeling very much taken down.

"'Oh--it was you composed it as well as wrote it, was it?' said he laughing. 'Ho, ho! that's the best joke I ever heard. Poor little Crisp, what a shame to get her to father--or mother a thing like this; ha, ha! "prior to the death of the latter"--that's something like a play of language! My eye, what a game she's been having with us!'

"'_Us_! then you're the idiot who wrote about the Swallows!' said I.

"'Suppose I am,' said he, blushing all over, 'suppose I am.'

"'Well, all I can say is, I'm precious glad the little Crisp isn't guilty of it. "Two of ye do not a summer make," indeed!'

"'Well, they don't,' said he.

"'I know they don't,' said I, half dead with laughing, 'but you needn't go and tell everybody.'

"'I'm sure it's just as interesting as "Cain and Abel"--'

"'There now, we don't want to hear any more about them,' said I, 'but I think we ought to send them both back to Miss Crisp, to give her her laugh against us too.'

"We did so; and I needn't tell you she lets us have it whenever we get within twenty yards of her.

"Here's a long digression, but it may amuse you; and you said you wanted something to read.

"Well, Waterford and I recovered in a few days from our first reverse, and decided to have another shot; and so we were rather glad of the quiet evening at the office to make our new attempts. We half thought of writing a piece between us, but decided we'd better go on our own hooks after all, as our styles were not yet broken in to one another.

We agreed we had better this time both write on subjects we knew something about; Waterford accordingly selected 'A Day in a Sub-Sub- Editor's Life' as a topic he really could claim to be familiar with; while I pitched upon 'Early Rising,' a branch of science in which I flatter myself, old man, _you_ are not competent to tell me whether I excel or not. Half the battle was done when we had fixed on our subjects; so as soon as every one was gone we poked up the fire and made ourselves snug, and settled down to work.

"We plodded on steadily till we heard the half-past nine letters dropped into the box. Then it occurred to us we had better turn down the lights and give our office as deserted a look as we could. It was rather slow work sitting in the dark for a couple of hours, not speaking a word or daring to move a toe. The fire got low, but we dared not make it up; and of course we both had awful desires to sneeze and cough--you always do at such times--and half killed ourselves in our efforts to smother them. We could hear the cabs and omnibuses in Fleet Street keeping up a regular roar; but no footsteps came near us, except once when a telegraph boy (as we guessed by his shrill whistling and his smart step) came and dropped a telegram into the box. I a.s.sure you the click the flap of the letter-box made that moment, although I knew what it was and why it was, made my heart beat like a steam-engine.

"It was beginning to get rather slow when twelve came and still nothing to disturb us. We might have been forging ahead with our writing all this time if we had only known.

"Presently Waterford whispered,--

"'They won't try to-night now.'

"Just as he spoke we heard a creak on the stairs outside. We had heard lots of creaks already, but somehow this one startled us both. I instinctively picked up the ruler from the table, and Waterford took my arm and motioned me close to the wall beside him. Another creak came presently and then another. Evidently some one was coming down the stairs cautiously, and in the dark too, for we saw no glimmer of a light through the partly-opened door. We were behind it, so that if it opened we should be quite hidden unless the fellow groped round it.

"Down he came slowly, and there was no mistake now about its being a human being and not a ghost, for we heard him clearing his throat very quietly and snuffling as he reached the bottom step. I can tell you it was rather exciting, even for a fellow of my dull nerves.

"Waterford nudged me to creep a little nearer the gas, ready to turn it up at a moment's notice, while he kept at the door, to prevent our man getting out after he was once in.

"Presently the door opened very quietly. He did not fling it wide open, luckily, or he was bound to spot us behind it; but he opened it just enough to squeeze in, and then, feeling his way round by the wall, made straight for the letter-box. Although it was dark he seemed to know his way pretty well, and in a few seconds we heard him stop and fumble with a key in the lock. In a second or two he had opened it, and then, crouching down, began cautiously to rub a match on the floor. The light was too dim to see anything but the crouching figure of a man bending over the box and examining the addresses of one or two of the letters in it. His match went out before he had found what he wanted.