For the most part, the students lived in Baxter, but each year saw more and more scholars come from other towns.
Due to his understanding of young people, Mr. Vining had established the policy of allowing them to settle their differences themselves, only interfering in cases of unusual seriousness.
But fighting in public was tabooed—and because they knew this, the students had fled when his unheralded arrival had put a stop to the quarrel between Fred and Bart.
No sooner had he disappeared within the building, however, than the scholars emerged from their hiding places.
Swarming about Fred, they looked at him like one about to receive condign punishment.
"You're a nice one, you are, to get Bart in trouble on the very first day of school," came from the lad called Taffy.
"Then he shouldn't have said such things about my father," retorted Fred.
"And he called you a puppy," chimed in another.
"It isn't a nice word, but it doesn't seem to me as mean as saying such things about Mr. Markham," asserted the new Second Former to his neighbor.
"It don't, eh?" ejaculated the other. "Well, it's a good deal worse. 'Puppy' is the fighting word at Baxter."