The window was a French one leading into the back garden; but, unhappily, Mrs. Knaggs’s bedroom was only two floors higher, and it also looked out on the back; and Mrs. Knaggs herself was in her room and near her window when the report startled her, and not less because she little dreamt what it was until she looked out in time to see a cloud of smoke escaping from the schoolroom window, and Pocket examining the target, weapon in hand. There was a great scene about it. Mrs. Knaggs shrieked a prohibition from aloft, and having pacified an incoherent cook upon the stairs, descended to extract a solemn promise which might well have ended the matter. Pocket was very contrite, indeed, drew his weapon’s teeth with a promptitude that might have been his death, and offered it and them to be placed under lock and key until he left. But Mrs. Knaggs contented herself with promoting a solemn promise into a Sacred Word of Honour—which rather hurt poor Pocket—and with sending him a very straight message by Vivian after supper. “The mater’s awfully sorry,” said Vivian, returning from a mission which Pocket had been obliged to instigate after all. “There’s not a spare bed in the house.” Guy incontinently declared there was. A fraternal frown alone prevented him from going into particulars. “A sofa would do me all right,” suggested Pocket, who had long ago lost his last train, and would have preferred a bare plank where there were boys to fussy old Miss Harbottle’s best bed. But Vivian Knaggs shook his head. “The mater says she couldn’t sleep with firearms in the house.” “I’ll bury them in the garden if she likes.” “Then you smoke in the night, and at Coverley’s you once walked in your sleep,” pursued Vivian, who certainly seemed to have been urging the interloper’s cause. “And the mater’s afraid you might walk out of a window or set the house on fire.” “I shouldn’t do either to-night,” protested Pocket, with a grin. “I’ve not got anything to smoke, and I have got something to keep me quiet.” And with further information on both points the son of the house went upstairs again, only to return in quicker time with a more embarrassed gravity. “She’s awfully sorry,” he said unconvincingly, “but she can’t undertake the responsibility of putting you up with your asthma.”