“You can explain it?” said Teacher Meadows. “Then, wherefore have you withheld your communication so long?”
He, at least, had profited by the professor’s discourse; he had caught that long-winded gentleman’s scholastic phraseology.
“I—I—was afraid to speak; I—I ain’t well;” Jim stammered.
“Pray begin your version of it,” said Mr. Meadows, with a weary look, that told of an aching head and a sore heart.
“Yes, Mr. Meadows,” Jim said hastily. “While Mr. Rhadamanthus was speaking, I saw Steve slip out of school and go to the far end of the grounds, where his dog was sleeping; and then they both got up and they went outside of the gates; but the fence hid them from me, and so I can’t tell you what they did outside of the gates.”
Here the narrator paused to take breath, and Teacher Meadows said, sharply, “Yes, very good; but why didn’t you pay attention to the speaker? Instead of idly gaping out of the window at a boy and his dog, why didn’t you listen to that spirited dissertation on hydrophobia, and assiduously take notes of the learned remarks? So distinguished a speaker may never visit our town again; and—”
“Yes, sir,” interrupted Jim, “but if I hadn’t looked out of the window, I shouldn’t have known how it all happened.”
Teacher Meadows was nonplussed. With a zigzag wave of the hand, he simply said, “Resume; I will not argue the point.”
Jim resumed. “I was sitting by the window, and I watched until they came back to the gates. They were too far away for me to see what they had been doing; but I watched, and pretty soon I seen Tip chasing a whopping big old striped used-up cat like—like—like—”
“Like what?” angrily asked the teacher.