“Why, Clara!” exclaimed Laura Belding, “aren’t you going to give it back to him?”
“Look here, girls!” ejaculated the excited and thoughtless Bobby, looking up from the newspaper clipping. “What do you think of this? Old Dimple must be secretly interested in modern crime as well as in the murdered ancient languages. This is all about those forgeries in the Merchants and Miners Bank, of Albany. You know, they say a young fellow—almost a 10 boy—did them; and he can’t be found and they don’t know what he did with the money obtained by the circulating of the false paper.”
“My! Our Aunt Dora lost some securities. She just wrote us about it,” Dorothy Lockwood said, eagerly.
“And he wasn’t much but a boy!” murmured Nellie. But Laura said, sharply: “Bobby! that’s not nice. Run after Professor Dimp and give the clipping to him.”
“Gee! you’re so awfully particular,” grumbled the harum-scarum. But she started after the shabby figure of the Latin teacher and caught up with him before Professor Dimp had reached the end of the next block—for Bobby Hargrew had taken the palm in the quarter mile dash at the Girls’ Branch League Field Day and there were few girls at Central High who could compete with her as a sprinter.
When she returned to the group of her friends, still eagerly discussing the plane for their camping trip, her footsteps lagged. Laura noticed the curious expression on the smaller girl’s face.
“What has happened you, Bobby?” she demanded.
“Why! I’m so surprised,” gasped Bobby. “I must have done something awful to Old Dimple. 11 When he saw what it was I handed him, he grabbed it and just snarled at me:
“‘Where did you get that, Miss Hargrew?’
“And when I told him, he looked as though he didn’t believe me and had to search his pocket to make sure he had dropped it. And he looked at me so fiercely and suspiciously. Goodness! I don’t know what I’ve done to him.”