difficulty should be solved so promptly, for now, of course, she
might ask as many questions as she pleased and no one would wonder
at her sudden interest in our distant colonies. In the meantime
Grannie and Aunt Mary were both too much engrossed in the puzzle to
notice the rather peculiar expression on Mollie's face, and soon she
too became absorbed in the puzzle under her eyes, and forgot for the
moment the stranger puzzle in her mind.

When Mollie's breakfast-tray came up next morning, the first thing
she saw on it was a letter from Dick. She seized it and tore it
open.


"DEAR MOLL,

"I've had the rummest experience you ever. Young Outram says it was
-pyh- -psy- -pysh---ghosts, you know. He says I must tell you
_exactly_ what happened and not leave out anything, because quite
small things might turn out to be most important. Young Outram is
great on ghosts and Spirits, he says it is because he was born in
the East. It happened like this. Y.O. and me were sitting together
at our desk, which is at the back beside the window. It is a very
good desk. Old Nosey was talking about _Macbeth_--or perhaps it was
_Paradise Lost,_ I am not sure of this point, because sometimes he
does one and sometimes the other, according to the mood he is in.
But it was one of them. Y.O. and I were making a list of Probable
Players in next term's 1st XV, and we both said 'Jenkyns will have
left', at the same time, so we hooked little fingers and said
Kipling, and were wishing a wish when all of a sudden, _without the
slightest warning_ there appeared, sitting on _our desk,_ the most