he replied, ruefully gazing upon the ruined cushion. "That's what I get for being an idiot. I don't know – "
"It's what you get for pretending that you can't believe all that you can't see," put in the ghost, "which is a very grave error for a young man – or an old one, either, for that matter – to make."
Parley sat down, and was silent for a moment.
"Well," he said at length, "granting that there are such things as ghosts, and that you are one, what the deuce do you come bothering me for? Just wanted to plague me, I suppose, and get me to smash my furniture."
"Not at all," retorted the ghost. "I didn't ask you to smash your furniture. On the contrary, I warned you that that was what you were going to do. You suggested smashing me, and I told you to go ahead."
Parley couldn't deny it, but he could not quite conceal his resentment.
"Don't you think I'm bothered enough by the prospect of a beautiful flunk at my exams, without your trickling in through the doorway to exasperate me?" he demanded.
"Who has come to exasperate you, Parley?" said the ghost, a trifle irritably. "I haven't. I came to help you, but, by Jingo! I've half a mind to leave you to get out of your troubles the best way you can. Do you know what's the matter with you? You are too impetuous. You are the kind of chap who strikes first and thinks afterwards. So far your experiments on me have kept me from telling you who I am and what I've come for. If you don't want help, say so. There are others who do, and I'll be jiggered if I wouldn't rather help them than you, now that I know what a fly-away Jack you are."
The spirit with which the visitor uttered these words made Parley somewhat ashamed of his behavior, and yet no one could really blame him, under the circumstances, for doing what he did.
"I'm sorry," he said, in a moment, "but you must remember, sir, that at Blue Haven there is no chair in manners, and the etiquette of a meeting of this sort is a closed book to me."
"That's all right," returned the ghost, kindly. "I don't blame you, on the whole. The trouble lies just where you say. In college people study geology and physiology and all the other 'ologies, save spectrology. Most college trustees disbelieve in ghosts, just as you do, and the consequence is you only touch upon the relations of man with the spirit world in your studies of psychology, and then only in a very incomplete fashion. Any gentleman knows how to behave to another gentleman, but when he comes into contact with a spook he's all at sea. If somebody would only write a ghost-etiquette book, or a 'Spectral Don't,' people who suffer from what you are pleased to call hallucinations would have an easier time of it. If I had been a book-agent, or a sneak-thief, or a lady selling patent egg-beaters which no home should be without, you would have received me with greater courtesy than you did."
"Still," said Parley, anxious to make out a good case for himself, "most of 'em wouldn't walk right into a fellow's room and scare him to death, you know."
"Nor would I," said the ghost. "You are still living, Parley, as you wouldn't have been if I'd scared you to death."
"Specious, but granted," returned Parley. "And now, Mr. Spook, let's exchange cards."
"I left my card-case at home," laughed the spirit. "But I'll tell you who I am and it will suffice. I'm old Billie Watkins, of the class of ninety-nine."
"There is no Watkins in ninety-nine," said Parley, suspiciously.
"Well, there was," retorted the spirit. "I ought to know, because I was old Billie myself. Valedictorian, too."
"What are you talking about?" demanded Parley. "Ninety-nine hasn't graduated yet!"
"Yes, it has," returned the ghost. "Seventeen ninety-nine, I mean."
Parley whistled. "Oh, I see! You're a relic of the last century!"
"That's it; and I can tell you, Parley, we eighteenth-century boys made Blue Haven a very different sort of a place from what you make it," said Billie. "We didn't mind being young, you know. When we had an eight-oared race, we rowed only four men, and each man managed two oars. And there wasn't any fighting over strokes, either; and we'd row anybody that chose to try us. The main principle was to have a race, and the only thing we thought about was getting in first."
"In any old way, I suppose?" sneered Parley.
"You bet!" cried the spirit, with enthusiasm. "We'd have put our eight-oared crew up against twenty Indians in a canoe, if they'd asked us; and when it came to rounders, we could bat balls a mile in those days. A fellow didn't have to make a science out of his fun when I was at Blue Haven."
"And what good did it do you?" cried Parley.
"We held every belt and every mug and every medal in the thirteen States, that's what. We laid out Cambridge at one-old-cat eight times in two months, and as for those New York boys, we beat 'em at marbles on their own campus," returned the ghost.
Parley was beginning to be interested.
"I'd like to see the records of those times," he said.
"Records? Bosh!" said old Billie Watkins. "You don't for a moment believe that every time we played a game of marbles or peg-top, or rowed against a lot of the town boys, we sat down and wrote up a history of it, do you? We were too busy having fun for that. Oh, those days! those days!" the ghost added, with a sigh. "College wasn't filled with politicians and scientific fun-seekers and grandfathers then."
"Grandfathers? More likely you were forefathers," suggested Parley.
"We've become both since," said Watkins. "But we were boys then, and glad of it."
"Aren't we boys now?" queried Parley.
"Yes, you are," replied the ghost. "But you seem to be doing your best to conceal the fact. As soon as a lad gets into college now he puts on all the airs of a man. Walks, talks like a grave man. Eats and drinks like a grave man. Why, I don't believe you ever robbed the president's hen-coop in your life!"
"No," laughed Parley, "never. For two reasons: it's easier to get our chickens cooked at the dining-hall, and Prex hasn't got a hen-coop."
"Exactly. Even our college presidents aren't what they were. Never hooked a ham out of his smoke-house, either, I'll wager, and for the same reason – Prex hasn't a smoke-house. All the smoking he does is in the line of cigars. But all this hasn't got anything to do with what I came here for. I came to help you, and I've seen enough of the way things are done in colleges these days to know that in the other respects of which I have spoken you are beyond help. Besides, this help is personal. You are worried about your examinations, aren't you?"
"Well, rather," said Parley. "You see, I've been playing football."
"Precisely," said Watkins. "And you've put so much time into learning to do it scientifically and without using your feet, as we did, that you've let everything else go."
"I suppose so," said Parley, sullenly.
"That's it," said old Billie Watkins. "Now that everything's science, there isn't time for a boy to do more than one thing at a time, and he's got to choose between his degree and seeing his picture in the papers as an athlete. Well, it's not your fault, maybe. It's the times, and I'm going to help you out. I always try to help somebody once a year. It's my Christmas gift to mankind, and this year I've decided to help you out of your fix. Last year I helped Blue Haven win the debating championship as against our traditional rivals. This year I should have tried to get Blue Haven to the fore in the boat-race, but everybody about here was so
