“Why, father is on the Board of Education this year, you know, and he told us—but you mustn’t repeat it!—that Bill Jackway had admitted that the night the gym. was first raided Rufus slipped into the building unbeknown to him early in the evening, and was there until after midnight. Then he cried to go home, being afraid, he said. But Jackway let him out without ever making the rounds of the gym., and so he doesn’t know for sure whether the damage to the apparatus was done while Rufe was there, or afterward.”
“My goodness me!” gasped Nellie. “How awful!”
“Could it be that half-foolish boy, do you suppose?” cried Jess.
“He isn’t so foolish. Rufe is dreadfully cunning about some things,” replied Laura. “Think of those footprints in the athletic field. I know the person who made them walked backwards. Maybe Rufe got into the gym. again unknown to his uncle; and he’d be just sharp enough to get out of that window backward and so reach the fence.”
“And he could be hired to do that for a little money,” said Jess, confidently.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that!” exclaimed Nellie. “It’s too dreadful.”
“But Mr. Jackway can’t make Rufe admit it. The boy won’t speak. And the Board doesn’t know what to do about it,” Laura said. “Now, I’ve told you girls this; don’t let it go any farther.”
They promised—and they were girls who could keep their word. Lance and Chet on the front seat of the machine, with Bobby between them, hadn’t heard it at all.
When the cars reached the Sitz place Eve and Otto were taken into the tonneau of the Beldings’ car, and they went on, down the leaf-strewn road, toward Peveril Pond. The forest fire that had threatened all this side of the ridge had burned out without crossing the wide highway known as “the State Road” and so the lower slope of the ridge and all the valley had been untouched.
They passed the district school which Eve attended before she came to Central High.