"And can you spare a bit of candle ?" (And as he went upstairs, it must have been just about the time that the letter-box at Barham was cleared for the late Sunday post.) (II) Frank lay a long time awake in the dark that night, holding tight in his hand Jenny's letter, written to him in June.

The bill he had not even troubled to open.
For the letter said exactly and perfectly just all those things which he most wished to hear, in the manner in which he wished to hear them.
It laughed at him gently and kindly; it called him an extraordinarily silly boy; it said that his leaving Cambridge, and, above all, his manner of leaving it--Frank had added a postscript describing his adventure with the saddle and the policeman--were precisely what the writer would have expected of him; it made delightful and humorous reflections upon the need of Frank's turning over a new leaf--there was quite a page of good advice; and finally it gave him a charming description--just not over the line of due respect--of his father's manner of receiving the news, with extracts from some of the choicest remarks made upon that notable occasion.

It occupied four closely-written pages, and if there were, running underneath it all, just the faintest taint of strain and anxiety, loyally concealed--well--that made the letter no less pleasant.
I have not said a great deal about what Jenny meant to Frank, just because he said so very little about her himself.

She was, in fact, almost the only element in his variegated life upon which he had not been in the habit of pouring out torrential comments and reflections.
His father and Archie were not at all spared in his conversation with his most intimate friends; in fact, he had been known, more than once, in a very select circle at Cambridge, to have conducted imaginary dialogues between those two on himself as their subject, and he could imitate with remarkable fidelity his Cousin Dick over a billiard-table.
But he practically never mentioned Jenny; he had not even a photograph of her on his mantelpiece.

And it very soon became known among his friends, when the news of his engagement leaked out through Jack, that it was not to be spoken of in his presence.