"Yes," put in Ted, "and it isn't fair."
"Phil!" said Bess incredulously. "You don't mean that Phil Cameron has to be whipped in school! What has he done?"
"He hasn't," said Rob. "I don't think he did it at all, only she doesn't know who did, and so she is going to whip Phil."
"Jiminy!" said Ted, rolling off the steps to the ground, in his excitement. "I'd like to go for her! It's a burning shame to whip Phil. There isn't a better lad in all the school, and she likes him herself, when she isn't mad."
From these remarks, however emphatic and lucid they might seem to the boys who were in the secret, Bess had gathered but the one fact, that Phil was in disgrace at school and was to be whipped. To her mind, corporal punishment in schools was degrading and brutalizing, and the idea of its being employed on a refined, gentle boy, like Phil, shocked her and roused her indignation, for she knew the lad well enough to be sure that he had done nothing to justify such extreme measures.
"I'll tell you about it, Miss Bess," said Bert. "You see, Phil has been feeling funny all day, and when we marched round to get the dumb-bells, he just turned his toes square in, and waddled along, so," and Bert illustrated the proceeding for Bessie's benefit. "We fellows all laughed, and that rattled Miss Witherspoon awfully, and started her down on him. I guess she didn't feel just right to-day, perhaps. Well, by and by, when we were studying, all of a sudden somebody snapped a great agate up the aisle, right bang against Miss Witherspoon's desk. It astonished her and made her jump, but she picked it up and only said, 'If this happens again, I shall whip the boy that does it,' and then went on with her class. Pretty soon another one went rolling along, but she wasn't quick enough to catch the boy, so she began asking us all if we knew who did it. We were all the other side of the room but Phil, and he was the only one in the room that said he did know. Miss Witherspoon asked him who it was, but he just shut his mouth. Then she asked if he did it, and he just said 'No.' And then she told him she'd whip him unless he told, but he just wouldn't, and I say, Good for him!"
"Hurrah for Phil!" said Ted, turning a somersault on the turf.
Bess looked perplexed. She knew Miss Witherspoon too well, a veteran teacher who had grown hard in the service, a nervous old maid who ruled her children with an iron rod, and then went home and wept bitter tears because they did not love her, conscientious to a fault, and at heart anxious for the good of her pupils, although no consideration would make her take back a hasty word, or lighten a punishment ordered in a moment of anger. This was the first time that one of the I.I.'s had been publicly punished in this way, and each one of them felt the disgrace as keenly as if it had been his own, while with one consent they had come to Bess for advice and consolation.
"There comes Phil, now!" exclaimed Rob.
Bess gave one look at the small figure coming along the street, with his hat pulled down over his face, and his hands plunged deep into his pockets.