If only stiff old Trius would answer the questions we ask him! He knows everything that is going on up there.

But the old crosspatch never says a word when one comes near him to talk; all he does is to come along with his big stick.

He naturally doesn't want anybody to know what is happening up there, but everybody in school knows that a ghost wanders about and sighs through the pine trees." "Mother has said more than once that nothing is going on there at all.
She doesn't want you to talk about the ghost with the school-children, and she has asked you not to try to find out what they know about it.
You know, too, that mother wants you to call the castle watchman Mr.
Trius and not just Trius." "Oh, yes, I'll call him Mr.Trius, but I'll make up such a song about him that everybody will know who it is about," Kurt said threateningly.
"How can he help it when there is no ghost in Wildenstein about which he could tell you tales," Mea remarked.
"Oh, he has enough to tell," Kurt eagerly continued.

"Many wonderful things must have happened in a castle that is a thousand years old.

He knows them all and could tell us, but his only answer to every question is a beating.