Jim started, hesitated, and said, desperately, “I don’t know, I’m sure.”
“Go on!” said the wearied listener, with a sinister frown.
“Yes, sir. Well, he caught the cat, and they had an awful fight! I expect Tip got used up in the fight, Mr. Meadows. Then the cat got away—then Tip chased after it towards the school—and then the next thing I knew, Tip was right in the school! That’s all I know about it, sir.”
“A most succinct relation, James,” commented Mr. Meadows, with a reckless disregard for the rules of grammar as regulated by logic in his octavo grammar. “But when you knew all about it, why didn’t you warn us in time? Then this misfortune would not have happened.”
“I—I was frightened myself, sir,” Jim acknowledged.
“Where was Stephen? You left him at the gate,” said the teacher.
“No, sir; I wasn’t with him; I didn’t do anything to him;” Jim said innocently.
“I guess he ran off after the fight,” ventured a boy.
“Here comes Steve now,” a scholar announced.