“It’s a splendid name,” Tod exclaimed huffily, “but of course if you think it’s too uncommon he can be ‘T. Jones, Esq.,’ or ‘John Jones’ if you insist upon it. How would you like ‘Peter Jones’?”
“T. Jones will do spiffingly,” Peter answered with some haste. “_We’ll_ know his name is Theopompus right enough, and it don’t matter a hang to them whether he’s Theobald or Theophilus or anything; but I say, Tod, must he be an uncle?”
“Yes,” Tod replied firmly, “he jolly well must, and, what’s more, he’s got to be going to Injia just as term begins. We’ll look out the sailings in uncle’s paper and choose his ship. He’ll just get there in the hot weather, but that can’t be helped.”
The twins were well acquainted with the whereabouts of “sailings” in the papers, as most Anglo-Indian children are.
“Why, you’ve planned it all, Tod,” Peter said admiringly. “How’ll you do about the writing?”
“I shall write as like old Stinks as possible, that niggly, scrabbly sort of writing, _you_ know.”
“By Jove! So you can--that’ll be all right. Parents and people call that sort of writing ‘scholarly,’ but if we did it they’d say we were beastly illiterate or something.”
“What I like about a scholarly handwriting,” said Tod thoughtfully, “is that no mortal can tell whether the spelling’s right or not. When I’m once through the Shop I shall always write a scholarly hand and not bother about spelling and that any more.”
“Boys,” a voice called from the next room, “you get to bed and don’t keep jawing all night.”
It would not be fair to disclose the exact spot in Wales from which that anxious relative, Mr. T. Jones, indited his first letter to the headmaster of the Public School which reckoned Tod and Peter among its pupils.
“There are several L’s in the place where he dwells, And of W’s more than one.”
but it is impossible to be more explicit than this.
The Principal of Harchester School was at breakfast in his hotel at the seaside when a letter marked “urgent” and “if away please forward immediately” reached him. He turned it over thoughtfully before opening it, for he thought he recognized the handwriting of one of his masters (familiarly referred to by Tod and Peter as “old Stinks”), a science master, much given to drawing his attention to various details by means of lengthy epistles.