They settled down to it in grim determination, cutting out the down-town luncheon and munching crackers and cheese while they opened and read and wrote and returned money and explained and re-explained in deadly and wearisome repetition.
"My land!" said Jimaboy, stretching his arms over his head, when Isobel got up to light the lamps, "isn't the credulity of the race a beautiful thing to contemplate? Let's hope this furore will die down as suddenly as it jumped up. If it doesn't, I'm going to make Hasbrouck furnish us a stenographer and pay the postage."
But it did not die down. For a solid fortnight they did little else than write letters and postal cards to anxious applicants, and by the end of the two weeks Jimaboy was starting up in his bed of nights to rave out the threadbare formula of explanation: "Dear Madam: The ad. you saw in the _Sunday Times_ was not an ad.; it was a joke. There is no Post-Graduate School of W. B. in all the world. Please don't waste your time and ours by writing any more letters."
The first rift in the cloud was due to the good offices of Hasbrouck. He saw matter of public interest in the swollen jest and threw the columns of the _Sunday Times_ open to Jimaboy. Under the racking pressure, the sentimentalist fired volley upon volley of scathing ridicule into the massed ranks of anxious inquirers, and finally came to answering some of the choicest of the letters in print.
"Good!" said Hasbrouck, when the "Jimaboy Column" in the Sunday paper began to be commented on and quoted; and he made Jimaboy an offer that seemed like sudden affluence.
But the crowning triumph came still later, in a letter from the editor of one of the great magazines. Jimaboy got it at the _Times_ office, and some premonition of its contents made him keep it until Isobel could share it.
"We have been watching your career with interest," wrote the great man, "and we are now casting about for some one to take charge of a humorous department to be called 'Bathos and Pathos,' which we shall, in the near future, add to the magazine. May we see more of your work, as well as some of Mrs. Jimaboy's sketches?
"O Jimmy, dear, you found yourself at last!"
But his smile was a grin. "No," said he; "we've just got our diplomas from the Post-Graduate School of W. B.--that's all."
