You can come and clear up after breakfast, and if you've got nothing to do after morning school, you can come and take a bat down at the nets, while I bowl." At the very least Heathcote had expected to be horrified, when this terrible ogre did speak, by a broadside of bad language; and he felt quite bewildered as he recalled the brief conversation and detected in it not a single word which could offend anybody.

On the contrary, everything had been most proper and considerate, and the last invitation coming from a first eleven man to his new fag was quite gratuitously friendly.
"I don't think he's so bad," he remarked to Dick, as they went from chapel to breakfast.
"All I know is," said Dick, "Cresswell was asking me if it was my chum who had been drawn by Pledge, and when I told him, he told me I might say to you, from him, that you had better be careful not to get too chummy with the 'spider;' and the less you hang about his study the better.

I don't think Cresswell would say a thing like that unless he meant it." "I dare say not," said Heathcote.

"But I wish to goodness some one would say what it all means.

I can't make it out." After breakfast he repaired to his lord's study, and cleared the table.
"Well," said Pledge.