“Well, it was the doctor,” said Jack. “Mr. Ball’s very sick and we’ve ’most killed him; that’s all. We’re a pack of cowards to go tooting at a poor old man when he’s already down, and we ought to be kicked, every one of us. That’s the way I feel about it,” and Jack set out for home, not waiting for any leave-taking with the rest, who, for their part, slunk away in various directions, anxious to get their instruments of noise and torment hidden away out of sight.
Jack stuck the dinner-bell under the hay in the stable-loft, whence he could smuggle it into the house before his mother should get down-stairs in the morning. Then he went into the house.
“Where have you been?” asked Mrs. Dudley. “I came home early so that you needn’t be lonesome.”
“Bob Holliday and Harry Weathervane came for me, and I found it so lonesome here that I went out with them.”
“Have you got your lessons?”
“No, ma’am,” said Jack, sheepishly.
He was evidently not at ease, but his mother said no more. He went off to bed early, and lay awake a good part of the night. The next morning he brought the old dinner-bell and set it down in the very middle of the breakfast-table. Then he told his mother all about it. And she agreed with him that he had done a very mean thing.