“So he is!” said several others.
“Silence! silence!” shouted Josiah Crabtree, leaping to his feet and shaking his ruler in the pupils’ faces. “Silence! I will have silence!”
“Anybody got any silence to spare?” murmured Pepper, looking behind him. “Mr. Crabtree wants to borrow some silence.” And at this a snicker went around.
“I will have silence!” repeated the teacher. “If you are not silent I will keep every one of you in after school!”
“Mr. Crabtree,” said Jack, arising and facing the irate teacher boldly. As major of the school battalion he felt it his duty to speak.
“Ruddy, what do you want?” snapped the teacher.
“There has evidently been a mistake made. I think most of the boys here understood you to say we were to go to the end of paragraph twenty-two——”
“That’s it! That’s it!” came in a dozen voices.
“Silence! Ruddy, sit down!”
“But, sir, I would suggest——”