“Young gentlemen, before I say what I intend to, I wish to be perfectly fair and just to you,” began the president. “Did you, or did you not put the picture on the flagpole. Answer me on your honor as gentlemen and students at Boxwood Hall.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Jerry spoke in a low voice.
“We did it, Dr. Cole,” he said.
“So I was informed.”
Ned just ached to ask who had been the informant, but he knew he did not dare.
Dr. Cole seemed to be thinking deeply, and then he began to speak.
He gave the boys a straight-from-the-shoulder talk—a good, manly lecture, in which he explained to them why he regarded their offense seriously. They might have played other pranks that would not have had such a possible effect as the irreparable damage of the founder’s picture. If that had been torn it would have been a grave loss.
And from that Dr. Cole went into a general exposition of boyish pranks in general. It was a talk along the same lines as had been given to the boys by their parents before they were sent to Boxwood Hall. They were reminded that they were now growing up, and should give some evidences of it.
Ned, Bob and Jerry, rather angry at first that they had been caught, and filled with perhaps righteous indignation against the informer, began to see matters in a different light. They were rather ashamed of themselves, and Jerry frankly admitted that the entire idea was his, and that he had persuaded Bob and Ned to join him. In view of that fact he asked that he alone be punished.