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“It’s a splendid name,” Tod exclaimed huffily, “but of course if you think it’s too uncommon he can be ‘T. Jones, Esq.,’ or ‘John Jones’ if you insist upon it. How would you like ‘Peter Jones’?”

“T. Jones will do spiffingly,” Peter answered with some haste. “We’ll know his name is Theopompus right enough, and it don’t matter a hang to them whether he’s Theobald or Theophilus or anything; but I say, Tod, must he be an uncle?”

“Yes,” Tod replied firmly, “he jolly well must, and, what’s more, he’s got to be going to Injia just as term begins. We’ll look out the sailings in uncle’s paper and choose his ship. He’ll just get there in the hot weather, but that can’t be helped.”

The twins were well acquainted with the whereabouts of “sailings” in the papers, as most Anglo-Indian children are.

“Why, you’ve planned it all, Tod,” Peter said admiringly. “How’ll you do about the writing?”

“I shall write as like old Stinks as possible, that niggly, scrabbly sort of writing, you know.”

“By Jove! So you can—that’ll be all right. Parents and people call that sort of writing ‘scholarly,’ but if we did it they’d say we were beastly illiterate or something.”