Graves looked round him helplessly. What was he to do? Could he disown this uncle? Should he explain that the whole thing was an invention, and that he had never possessed a rich uncle in Australia? Was it possible that by some curious trick there really was a Josiah Williams, Australian millionaire and philanthropist? If these men would only go and leave him alone to think!
Then suddenly there presented itself to his mind the other question: what would Josiah Williams be like? Would he be hopelessly unpresentable? Would he humiliate him, Reginald Graves, and render his subsequent years at St. Joseph's intolerable? How he wished these fellows would go!
At three o'clock on the following day the down platform at Oxford station presented an almost gala appearance. Not only were the men of St. Joseph's there, but hundreds of undergraduates from other colleges, with rattles, whistles, horns, flags, and every other attribute of great rejoicing.
Outside the station was a carriage with four horses, a piebald, a skewbald, a white, and another horse that seemed to have set out in life with a determination to be pink. Tom Little had himself selected the animals with elaborate care.
A little distance away, standing in groups, was a band clothed gorgeously in scarlet and gold tunics and caps, and nondescript trousers, ranging from light grey to black.
Tom Little had given careful instructions that as soon as Josiah Williams should emerge from the station, the band was to strike up "See the Conquering Hero Comes," and they were to put into it all they knew. If they produced a really good effect they were to have unlimited beer.
Reginald Graves stood in the centre of the platform, some of the leading spirits of St. Joseph's keeping a clear space so that the meeting between uncle and nephew might be dramatic. A more wretched-looking nephew of a millionaire uncle never existed.
Round him were scores of men with cameras, whom Graves instinctively knew to be newspaper men; and perched high above the crowd occupying important strategical positions he counted eight cinematograph cameras, each with its attendant operator.
St. Joseph's men had been good customers to a well-known London perruquier for false wigs, whiskers, and moustaches, with the aid of which an unlimited supply of "newspaper" and "cinematograph-men" had been produced.