"So it must," he said. "I never thought of that. What a fearful complication! And then he, too, said I was a liar. So I took him by the collar and led him to the window, and I opened it and dropped him out. And then the one you call Williams came, and he also was indignant, and said I was to deny it, and I wouldn’t of course. And then we fought, and the furniture was much disarranged and Thicksides went under the sofa, and at last I got him outside, and finished him with Liddell and Scott. And now you know all! In your turn you can explain what it means. I beg you to do it, and then we will have some tea." And Bob explained the whole story. "You might have seen it in the papers," said Bob. "I don’t read ’em," said Bunting, "except to turn a _Times_ leader into Greek. But it seems a complicated situation, doesn’t it?" "It is very complicated," sighed Bob, "and my grandmother is very ill about it. And now she will wonder if it’s you, after all!" "Dear me, so she will," said Bunting. "Have some tea." They had tea, and Bob rose to go. "Will you write to the _Times_, and say you haven’t married her?" he asked. "Certainly not," said Mr. Bunting. "Didn’t I say to the others that I threw down-stairs that I _had_ married her?" "So you did," said Bob. "But of course you haven’t?" Bunting smiled. "Good-bye. When you come to Oxford again, come and see me. I must crawl under the sofa now." "What for?" asked Bob. "For Thucydides, of course," replied Mr. Bunting. And when Bob was in the train for London, he turned very pale. "Good heavens!" he said, "how do I know it isn’t this Bunting, after all?" *CHAPTER XIX.* After this, things by no means cleared up, as they should have done considering the amount of trouble that all the world took to find out the truth. Every one said something different from some one else. Bob gave horribly imaginative accounts of his adventures at Oxford, and threw out suggestions that Pen was really married to a Bunting, if not to Timothy Bunting. But when he appealed for corroboration to Gordon, that gentleman shuffled and prevaricated dreadfully, as he did not like to acknowledge he had been thrown down-stairs. There was a very curious scene, in which Gordon and Bob had the best part of a row before Titania, who came up to town to be near Dr. Lumsden Griff, who knew all about the left or right ventricle of her heart. As his jealous confrères said he knew nothing else, perhaps he did. However, that is by the way. "Tell it me again, Robert," said Titania. Bob told her again. "He said he was married to her?" "He said he said so to Mr. Plant and Mr. Gordon, and Williams and De Vere," said Bob, gloating over the details of the row. "And he slung ’em all down-stairs. He’s about six feet six high, and as broad as a billiard-table, and as strong as three Sandows, I should say."