“Harry Harding. What is yours?”
“My name’s Theodore Burke, but everybody calls me Ted or Teddy, and I just quit school to find a job.”
“I haven’t quit yet,” declared Harry, “but I’m going to as soon as I find work.”
“Then you didn’t get fired?”
“Oh, no. I am going to work to help my mother. I am obliged to find work.”
“I had a fight with the teacher,” related Teddy, with unabashed candor. “She said I was a menace to the West Park School, and she was going to have me put in a school for tough kids. So I gave the fellows my stuff and beat it at recess. Ma was mad, but she got over it right away and said I could go to work if I wanted to.”
“The teacher couldn’t put you in a school for tough boys, unless you did something pretty bad,” informed Harry.
“I put a rubber snake in a girl’s seat,” confessed Ted, “and she hollered like anything.” His black eyes twinkled.
Harry laughed. “Nobody could put you in a reform school for that,” he said wisely. “The teacher was trying to scare you. I guess you’re just full of mischief, that’s all.”