“How are you, old lad?” I asked in a hushed, bedside voice.

“I’m a ruined man,” said Sippy, looking like a poached egg.

“Oh, come,” I said, “it’s not so bad as all that. I mean to say, you had the swift intelligence to give a false name. There won’t be anything about you in the papers.”

“I’m not worrying about the papers. What’s bothering me is, How can I go and spend three weeks with the Pringles, starting today, when I’ve got to sit in a prison cell with a ball and chain on my ankle?”

“But you said you didn’t want to go.”

“It isn’t a question of wanting, fathead. I’ve got to go. If I don’t, my aunt will find out where I am. And if she finds out that I am doing thirty days without the option in the lowest dungeon beneath the castle moat⁠—well, where shall I get off?”