“I mean,” said Cresswell, interrupting him, and evidently not enjoying the topic, “I mean that nobody knows who writes the letters, or why. It’s been a mystery ever since I came here, three years ago. It happens sometimes twice or thrice a term; and other times perhaps only once in six months.”
“What had Heathcote better do?” asked Dick, feeling anything but reassured.
“Do! He’d better read the letter. There’s no use going and flourishing it all round the school.”
With this small grain of advice Dick betook himself to his friend, and succeeded in making him more than ever uncomfortable and perplexed. Nor was his perplexity made less when, during the next few days, it leaked out somehow, and spread all over Templeton, that Heathcote had had a letter from the ghost.
Interviewers waited on him from all quarters. Seniors cross-examined him, Fifth-form fellows tried to coax the letter out of him, and the Den called upon him, under threats of “Rule 5,” to make a full disclosure of what had befallen him. He had a fair chance of losing his head with all the attention paid him; and, had it not been for Cresswell’s advice, emphasised by Dick, he might, like the ass in the lion’s skin, have made himself ridiculous. As it was, he was not more than ordinarily intoxicated by his sudden notoriety, and kept the ghost’s letter prudently hidden in his own pocket.
One fellow, and one only besides Dick, saw it. And that was Pledge.
“What’s all this about the ghost?” asked the senior of his fag one evening during preparation in their study. “Is it true you’ve had a letter?”
“Yes,” said Heathcote, very uncomfortably.
“Do you mind letting me see it?”
“I’d rather not, please,” said the boy.