Isobel applauded loyally. "Why, that doesn't creak a little bit! Try it again; for the unhappy T. M.'s, this time. Ready? Play!"
Her picture was done while Jimaboy was still nibbling his pen and scowling over the scratch-pad. It was a drawing-room interior, with the wife in tears and the husband struggling into his overcoat. To them, running, an animated United States mail-bag, extending a huge envelope marked: "From the Post-Graduate School of W. B."
Jimaboy scratched out and rewrote, with the pen-drawing for an inspiration:
when you have taken a Correspondence Course in Wedded Bliss. A Scholarship in the Post-Graduate School of W. B. is the most acceptable wedding gift or Christmas present for your friends. Curriculum includes Matrimony as a Fine Art, Post-Marriage Courtship, Elementary and Advanced Studies in Conjugal Harmony, Easy Lessons in the Gentle Craft of Eating Her Experimental Bread, Practical Analysis of the Club-Habit, with special course for wives in the Abstract Science of Honeyfugling Parsimonious Husbands. Diploma qualifies for highest positions. Our Gold Medalists are never idle.
The Post-Graduate School of W. B., 506 Hayward Avenue, Cleland, Ohio.
N. B.--Graphophone, with Model Conversations for Married Lovers, furnished free with lectures on Post-Marriage Courtship.
They pinned the pictures each to its "copy" and had their laugh over the conceit.
"Blest if I don't believe we could actually fake the thing through if we should try," said Jimaboy. "There are plenty of people in this world who would take it seriously."
"I don't doubt it," was Isobel's reply. "People are so ready to be gold-bricked--especially by mail. But it's twelve o'clock! Shall I light the stove for luncheon?--or can we stand Giuseppe's?"
"I guess we can afford stuffed macaroni, this one time more," he rejoined. "Let's go now, while we can get one of the side tables and be exclusive."
They had barely turned the corner in the corridor when Lantermann's door opened and the cartoonist sallied out, also luncheon-stirred. He was a big German, with fierce military mustaches and a droop in his left eye that had earned him the nickname of "Bismarck" on the _Times_ force. He tapped at the Jimaboy door in passing, growling to himself in broken English.