short black pipe in the Great Court shortly before midnight, before
gathering up her skirts and vanishing on noiseless india-rubber-shod
feet round the kitchen quarters into the gloom of Neville's Court, as
the horrified porter descended from his signal-box.

Now many minds could have conceived these things; a smaller number of
people would have announced their intention of doing them: but there
were very few persons who would actually carry them all out to the very
end: in fact, Jack reflected, Frank Guiseley was about the only man of
his acquaintance who could possibly have done them. And he had done
them all on his own sole responsibility.

He had remembered, too, during the past week, certain incidents of the
same nature at Eton. There was the master who had rashly inquired, with
deep sarcasm, on the fourth or fifth occasion in one week when Frank had
come in a little late for five-o'clock school, whether "Guiseley would
not like to have tea before pursuing his studies." Frank, with a radiant
smile of gratitude, and extraordinary rapidity, had answered that he
would like it very much indeed, and had vanished through the still
half-open door before another word could be uttered, returning with a
look of childlike innocence at about five-and-twenty minutes to six.

"Please, sir," he had said, "I thought you said I might go?"

"And have you had tea?"

"Why, certainly, sir; at Webber's."

Now all this kind of thing was a little disconcerting to remember now.
Truly, the things in themselves had been admirably conceived and