“Rather,” replied his neighbour, whom Dick discovered afterwards to be no other than Raggles, the hero of the “cargo,” whose fame he had heard the day before.
“What’s the name of the captain?”
“Oh, Ponty! He doesn’t hurt,” said the boy. “It’s beasts like Mansfield, and Cresswell, and that lot who come down on you.”
Dick would fain have inquired what sort of fellow Cresswell was, but he was too anxious not to let the affair of the whipper-in leak out, and refrained. He asked a few vague questions about the Sixth generally, and gathered from his companion that, with a very few exceptions, they were all “beasts” in school, that one or two of them were rather good at cricket, and swimming, and football, and that the monitorial system at Templeton, and at all other public schools, required revision. From which Dick argued shrewdly that Master Raggles sometimes got into rows.
By the time he had made this discovery the bell rang for first school, and there was a general movement to the door.
The two chums foregathered in the hall.
“Pity you weren’t up in time for a bathe,” said Heathcote, artfully securing the first word.
“I heard you went. Too much fag getting up so early. I mean to go down in the afternoon, when most of the fellows turn up.”
“Swinstead and Birket were there. I wish you’d been there.”
“Not worth the grind. You can come with me this afternoon, if you like. Some of the ‘sharks’ will be down as well.”