Fully forty boys, representing all the different classes at the Gridley High School, stood looking on at this altercation in the school grounds. Half a dozen of the girls, too, hovered in the background, interested, or curious, though not venturing too close to what might turn out to be a fight in hot blood.
"If I knew," rejoined Dick, in that same quiet voice, in which one older in the world's ways might have detected the danger-signal, "I wouldn't tell you."
"Bah!" jeered Fred Ripley, hotly.
"Perhaps you mean that you don't believe me?" said Prescott inquiringly.
"I don't!" laughed Ripley, shortly, bitterly.
"Oh!"
A world of meaning surged up in that exclamation. It was as though bright, energetic, honest Dick Prescott had been struck a blow that he could not resent. This, indeed, was the fact.
"See here, Ripley——-" burst, indignantly, from Dick Prescott's lips, as his face went white and then glowed a deeper red than before.
"Well, kid?" sneered Ripley.
"If I didn't have a hand—-the right hand, at that—-that is too crippled, today, I'd pound your words down your mouth."