“Good day, Johnny Blossom! What did you want to see me about?”
“It is horrid, but”—great searching first in one pocket of his trousers, then in the other—“but if you will please take this report back”—
“Take it back? What do you mean, John?”
“Why, because it says here he is a credit to the school, and he isn’t that—not now.”
“What is that you say? Speak out, my boy.”
The boy looked very little as he stood with his knees shaking before the big Principal.
“Because—because his name has been written in the police records today, and the policeman took him there, and so it was horrid that this report should say he was a credit”—
“Come, John. Tell me about it from the beginning.”
“Why, Nils of the ‘Goodwill of Luckton’ got his mother to go down-stairs and then he called us boys to come aboard and get some apples; and when we went he told his mother there were thieves on board; and he called the policeman.”
“Nils asked you to come on board?”