midnight
Frank had a terrible way of meaning what he said -- he reflected with dismay . There was the affair of the bread and butter three years ago , before either of them had learned manners . This had consisted in the fastening up in separate brown-paper parcels innumerable pieces of bread and butter , addressing each with the name of the Reverend Junior Dean -LRB- who had annoyed Frank in some way -RRB- , and the leaving of the parcels about in every corner of Cambridge , in hansom cabs , on seats , on shop-counters and on the pavements -- with the result that for the next two or three days the dean 's staircase was crowded with messenger boys and unemployables , anxious to return apparently lost property . Then there had been the matter of the flagging of a fast Northern train in the middle of the fens with a red pocket-handkerchief , to find out if it were really true that the train would stop , followed by a rapid retreat on bicycles so soon as it had been ascertained that it was true ; the Affair of the German Prince traveling incognito , into which the Mayor himself had been drawn ; and the Affair of the Nun who smoked a short black pipe in the Great Court shortly before midnight , before gathering up her skirts and vanishing on noiseless india-rubber-shod feet round the kitchen quarters into the gloom of Neville 's Court , as the horrified porter descended from his signal-box . Now many minds could have conceived these things ; a smaller number of people would have announced their intention of doing them : but there were very few persons who would actually carry them all out to the very end : in fact , Jack reflected , Frank Guiseley was about the only man of his acquaintance who could possibly have done them . And he had done them all on his own sole responsibility . He had remembered , too , during the past week , certain incidents of the same nature at Eton .