Straight down the crooked lane,

And all round tie square.

“Let’s ask Balbus about it,” said Hugh.

“All right,” said Lambert.

“He can guess it,” said Hugh.

“Rather,” said Lambert.

No more words were needed: the two brothers understood each other perfectly.

Balbus was waiting for them at the hotel: the journey down had tired him, he

said: so his two pupils had been the round of the place, in search of

lodgings, without the old tutor who had been their inseparable companion from

their childhood. They had named him after the hero of their Latin exercise-

book, which overflowed with anecdotes of that versatile genius — anecdotes

whose vagueness in detail was more than compensated by their sensational

brilliance. “Balbus has overcome all his enemies” had been marked by their

tutor, in the margin of the book, “Successful Bravery.” In this way he had

tried to extract a moral from every anecdote about Balbus — sometimes one of

warning, as in, “Balbus had borrowed a healthy dragon,” against which he

had written, “Rashness in Speculation” — sometimes of encouragement, as in

the words, “Influence of Sympathy in United Action,” which stood opposite

to the anecdote, “Balbus was assisting his mother-in-law to convince the

dragon” — and sometimes it dwindled down to a single word, such as

“Prudence”, which was all he could extract from the touching record that “

Balbus, having scorched the tail of the dragon, went away”. His pupils liked

the short morals best, as it left them more room for marginal illustrations,

and in this instance they required all the space they could get to exhibit

the rapidity of the hero’s departure.

Their report of the state of things was discouraging. That most fashionable

of watering-places, Little Mendip, was “chock-full” (as the boys expressed

it) from end to end. But in one Square they had seen no less than four cards,

in different houses, all announcing in flaming capitals, “ELIGIBLE

APARTMENTS.” “So there’s plenty of choice, after all, you see,” said

spokesman Hugh in conclusion.

“That doesn’t follow from the data,” said Balbus, as he rose from the

easy-chair, where he had been dozing over The Little Mendip Gazette. “They

may be all single rooms. However, we may as well see them. I shall be glad to

stretch my legs a bit.”

An unprejudiced bystander might have objected that the operation was

needless, and that this long lank creature would have been all the better

with even shorter legs: but no such thought occurred to his loving pupils.

One on each side, they did their best to keep up with his gigantic strides,

while Hugh repeated the sentence in their father’s letter, just received

from abroad, over which he and Lambert had been puzzling. “He says a friend

of his, the Governor of — what was that name again, Lambert?” (“Kgovjni,”

said Lambert.) “Well, yes. The Governor of — what-you-may-call-it-wants to

give a very small dinner-party, and he means to ask his father’s brother-in

-law, his brother’s father-in-law, his father-in-law’s brother, and his

brother-in-law’s father: and we’re to guess how many guests there will be.

”

There was an anxious pause. “How large did he say the pudding was to be!”

Balbus said at last. “Take its cubical contents, divide by the cubical

contents of what each man can eat, and the quotient — ”

“He didn’t say anything about pudding,” said Hugh, “ — and here’s the

Square,” as they turned a corner and came into sight of the “eligible

apartments”.

“It is a Square!” was Balbus’s first cry of delight, as he gazed around

him. “Beautiful! Beau-ti-ful Equilateral! And rectangular!”

The boys looked round with less enthusiasm. “Number Nine is the first with a

card,” said prosaic Lambert; but Balbus would not so soon awake from his

dream of beauty.

“See, boys!” he cried. “Twenty doors on a side! What symmetry! Each side

divided into twenty-one equal parts! It’s delicious!”

“Shall I knock, or ring?” said Hugh, looking in some perplexity at a square

brass plate which bore the simple inscription, “RING ALSO.”

“Both,” said Balbus. “That’s an Ellipsis, my boy. Did you never see an

Ellipsis before?”

“I couldn’t hardly read it,” said Hugh evasively. “Its no good having an

Ellipsis, if they don’t keep it clean.”

“Which there is one room, gentlemen,” said the smiling landlady. “And a

sweet room too! As snug a little back room — ”

“We will see it,” said Balbus gloomily, as they followed her in. “I knew

how it would be! One room in each house! No view, I suppose?”

“Which indeed there is, gentlemen!” the landlady indignantly protested, as

she drew up the blind, and indicated the back-garden.

“Cabbages, I perceive,” said Balbus. “Well, they’re green, at any rate.”

“Which the greens at the shops”, their hostess explained, “are by no means

dependable upon. Here you has them on the premises, and of the best.”

“Does the window open!” was always Balbus’s first question in testing a

lodging: and, “Does the chimney smoke?” his second. Satisfied on all

points, he secured the refusal of the room, and they moved on to Number

Twenty-five.

This landlady was grave and stern. “I’ve nobbut one room left,” she told

them: “and it gives on the back-gyarden.”

“But there are cabbages?” Balbus suggested.

The landlady visibly relented. “There is, sir,” she said: “and good ones,

though I say it as shouldn’t. We can’t rely on the shops for greens. So we

grows them ourselves.”

“A singular advantage,” said Balbus; and, after the usual questions, they

went on to Fifty-two.

“And I’d gladly accommodate you all, if I could,” was the greeting that

met them. “We are but mortal” (“Irrelevant!”) muttered Balbus), “and I’

ve let all my rooms but one.”

“Which one is a back-room and looking out on — on cabbages, I presume?”

“Yes, indeed, sir,” said their hostess. “Whatever other folks may do, we

grows our own. For the shops — ”

“An excellent arrangement,” Balbus interrupted. “Then one can really

depend on their being good. Does the window open?”

The usual questions were answered satisfactorily: but this time Hugh added

one of his own invention — “Does the cat scratch?”

The landlady looked round suspiciously, as if to make sure the cat was not

listening. “I will not deceive you, gentlemen,” she said. “It do scratch,

but not without you pulls its whiskers! It’ll never do it”, she repeated

slowly, with a visible effort to recall the exact words of some written

agreement between herself and the cat, “without you pulls its whiskers!”

“Much may be excused in a cat so treated,” said Balbus, as they left the

house and crossed to Number Seventy-three, leaving the landlady curtseying on

the doorstep, and still murmuring to herself her parting words, as if they

were a form of blessing, “ — not without you pulls its whiskers”

At Number Seventy-three they found only a small shy girl to show the house,

who said “yes’m” in answer to all questions .

“The usual room,” said Balbus, as they marched in “the usual back-garden,

the usual cabbages. I suppose you can’t get them good at the shops?”

“Yes’m,” said the girl.

“Well, you may tell your mistress we will take the room, and that her plan

of growing her own cabbages is simply admirable!”

“Yes’m,” said the girl, as she showed them out.

“One day-room and three bedrooms,” said Balbus, as they returned to the

hotel. “We will take as our day-room the one that gives us the least walking

to do to get to it.”

“Must we walk from door to door, and count the steps?” said Lambert.

“No, no Figure it out, my boys, figure it out,” Balbus gayly exclaimed, as

he put pens, ink, and paper before his hapless pupils, and left the room.

“I say! It’ll be a job!’ said Hugh.

“Rather!” said Lambert.