“Do it now,” said one of his admirers. “It’s great stuff.” “No, I never keep letters,” said Junior and, to prove it, tore up the carefully prepared document and tossed it in the fire. “I’ll let you know when I get a good one.” This was so successful that he did it again. There were plenty of other quotable pages in the same magazine article, and Junior had a whole box of his father’s stationery. But at the beginning and end of each letter Junior always insinuated a few paternal touches, suggesting a rich past of intimacy and affection, though just to make it a little more convincing he would occasionally insert something like this, “But I must tell you frankly, as man to man, that you spent entirely too much money last term,” and interrupted his reading to say, “Gee! I didn’t mean to read you fellows that part.” And they all laughed. A touch of parental nature that made all the boys akin. The fame of these letters spread from the boys’ end of the dinner table to the master’s. Mr. Fielding said to Junior one day, “I’m so glad your father has been writing to you lately.” “Lately? Why, he always writes to me. But don’t tell my Aunt Mary. Might make her jealous.” Junior smiled as if he had a great joke on his Aunt Mary. There, he got that over too! Neither of these ladies would dare criticize his father again. “Is your Aunt Mary so fond of him as all that?” “Why, of course!” “Well, I’m glad you’re hearing from him, anyway. I so seldom see letters addressed to you on the hall table. “I have a lock box at the post office.” “Oh,” said Mrs. Fielding. So that explained it all. It was true about the lock box. Junior exhibited the key while was he speaking, and he was seen at the post office frequently to make the matter more plausible. He even opened the box if any one was around to watch him, though he never found any letters there except those he put in and pulled out again by sleight of hand, whistling carelessly as he did so. Mr. Fielding had asked Junior to step into the office a moment. “What do you hear from your father?” he said. “Oh, he’s quite well, thank you, sir. He’ll be starting for home soon. He says he’s not going to let anything interfere with our canoe trip this year. It’s the funniest thing how something has always happened every summer to prevent it. Father says we’re going to break the hoodoo this time.” “I see,” said Mr. Fielding. Junior had heard Mr. Fielding say “I see” before and he had been in school too long now to undervalue its significance. He would have to be on guard. He knew he had told conflicting stories. “Do you hear from him regularly?” “Oh, no; the mails are so irregular from that part of the world.” “How often?” “Well,” said Junior, with his engaging smile, “not so often as I’d like, of course. But then he’s a very busy man.” “That story about the python--it sounded like a corker as Blackie told it secondhand. Mind letting me read that letter?”