'You never can tell with little boys. They have a mythology of their own.
There's a subject for you, by the way--"The Folklore of Private
Schools".'

'Yes; the crop is rather scanty, though. I imagine, if you were to
investigate the cycle of ghost stories, for instance, which the boys at
private schools tell each other, they would all turn out to be
highly-compressed versions of stories out of books.'

'Nowadays the _Strand_ and _Pearson's_, and so on, would be extensively
drawn upon.'

'No doubt: they weren't born or thought of in _my_ time. Let's see. I
wonder if I can remember the staple ones that I was told. First, there
was the house with a room in which a series of people insisted on passing
a night; and each of them in the morning was found kneeling in a corner,
and had just time to say, "I've seen it," and died.'

'Wasn't that the house in Berkeley Square?'

'I dare say it was. Then there was the man who heard a noise in the
passage at night, opened his door, and saw someone crawling towards him
on all fours with his eye hanging out on his cheek. There was besides,
let me think--Yes! the room where a man was found dead in bed with a
horseshoe mark on his forehead, and the floor under the bed was covered
with marks of horseshoes also; I don't know why. Also there was the lady
who, on locking her bedroom door in a strange house, heard a thin voice
among the bed-curtains say, "Now we're shut in for the night." None of
those had any explanation or sequel. I wonder if they go on still, those