“What have you in that bundle?” demanded Miss Klopper, as she saw the package the youth carried.
“Something of my own.”
“I demand to know what it is!”
“And I’m not going to tell you. It’s mine, and I have a perfect right to do as I please with my own things. Suffering cats!” exclaimed Jack softly. “I wish dad and mom was home,” and, not caring to have any further discussion with Miss Klopper, he passed on, before she would have a chance to summon the professor.
Jack was a good boy at heart, and he never would do a mean act, but the professor and his sister had treated him so harshly, though perhaps they did not appreciate it, that his spirit rose in rebellion.
Life at the professor’s house was becoming intolerable for Jack. How he wished his parents would come home. Yet it seemed now, with no news arriving from them, that it would be several months more before he could hope to be released from the guardianship of Mr. Klopper.
Jack made all haste to the town, from which the professor’s house was distant about a mile. He wanted to find Tom, and dispose of the glove in time to see the show from the start. He knew Tom would buy the mitt, for he had often expressed a wish to purchase it, and Tom usually had plenty of spending money.
Passing through the village streets Jack met several boys he knew.
“Going to the show?” was the question nearly every one of them asked of him.
“Sure,” he replied, as though he had several dollars in his pockets, with which to buy tickets. “I’ll meet you there. Seen Tom Berwick?” he went on.