"I'll go to the library."
"All right—and take Brown, if he'll go."
Jack washed up and brushed his uniform, and then made his way to Captain Putnam's private office. He found that Reff Ritter had hurried and gotten ahead of him, and was telling his story, both to the head of the school and to the first assistant teacher. Ritter's mouth, nose and one eye were swollen, and he looked anything but happy.
"You may remain in the hallway until I call you, Major Ruddy," said Captain Putnam, when Jack appeared, and the young major had to go outside, closing the door after him.
The telling of Reff Ritter's story took some time, and he was asked several questions by Captain Putnam and Josiah Crabtree. He said that he had just been getting ready to take some gymnastic exercise when Jack and some of his chums had come in and begun to talk about his father, saying that they had heard he was dishonest.
"Ruddy said he knew my father was dishonest," went on Reff Ritter. "That made me mad and I ran out of the dressing-room and told him he ought to be ashamed of himself, that my father was as honest as anybody. Then he got on his high-horse and told me to shut up or he would knock me down. I told him it was a shame for him to speak so of my father. Then he got mad and all of a sudden he jumped at me and hit me in the mouth and the eye and then in the nose. Then I went for him, and we had it hot and heavy, until we bumped into one of the wooden horses and I went down. He tried to hit me after I was down, but Coulter and Paxton hauled him back. Then Mr. Crabtree came in."
"A most disgraceful proceeding!" cried Josiah Crabtree. "And evidently Major Ruddy's fault entirely."
"You are quite sure Ruddy started the quarrel?" questioned Captain Putnam, gravely.
"And he told the other cadets that your father was dishonest?"