“Oh, I’m not worrying much about him,” returned Bobby carelessly. “He probably got enough to last him for a while. Then, too, he knows that we have the number of his car and could get the police after him if we wanted to.”
“I don’t know but what we ought to do that anyway,” suggested Shiner. “It’s a tough gang and perhaps it’s already done something that the police are interested in finding out about.”
“I guess we’d better let well enough alone,” replied Bobby. “Besides, I doubt whether the doctor would care to have the school mixed up in the matter. But now let’s get along after those doughnuts of Pee Wee. If we wait till to-morrow he’ll have spent the money, and this scrap has given me an appetite.”
“What are we going to do with these apples?” asked Fred. “There’s quite a bunch of them in this bag.”
“We’ll drop in at the Hall and leave them with the housekeeper,” Bobby decided.
“Don’t you think the doctor himself ought to be told about these fellows so that he can keep a closer watch on the orchard?” asked Skeets.
“I suppose he ought,” agreed Bobby. “But I hate to speak to him about it for fear he’ll think we’re looking for praise for getting rid of the rascals. But come along anyway, and we’ll get these apples off our hands.”
As luck would have it, their modesty was not to be spared, for as they went through the front door of the school the first person they encountered was Dr. Raymond himself, who was emerging from one of the classrooms.
The doctor was a tall spare man with an intellectual, finely cut face and a pair of eyes that could look right through one if he were guilty of any violation of rules but that more frequently had a twinkle in them that bespoke a kindly nature and the possession of a sense of humor. He was a strict disciplinarian and an excellent administrator, and had raised the school to a position of such high repute that he had been forced to establish a waiting list. Although the boys knew that he was not to be trifled with, they liked him because he was uniformly just and fair in his dealings with them.
He glanced at them with an expression of some surprise as he noted the bag of apples that Fred carried in his hand.