There were two sophomores there who had come over at the end of the paper chase, but neither went to the assistance of his defeated classman. Ripley, alone, got his sweater back over his head. The crowd was around Dick Prescott, who felt almost ashamed of the fight, unavoidable as he knew it to have been.
When he had finished getting his clothes on, Ripley stalked moodily past the main group.
"You mucker," he hissed, "I suppose you feel swelled up over having had a chance to fight gentleman. You——-"
"Oh, Ripley, dry up—-do!" interjected Ted Butler. "You call yourself a gentleman, but you talk and act more like well, more like a pup with the mange!"
"A pup with the mange! Great!" came the gleeful chorus from a half score of freshmen.
"I'm not through with you, yet, Prescott!" Fred Ripley called back over his shoulder. "I'll settle my score with you at my convenience!"
Then, as he put more distance between himself and the other Gridley
High School boys, Ripley added to himself:
"That settlement shall stop at nothing to put Dick Prescott in the dust—-where he belongs."
"Oh, freshie, but you've coolness and judgment," cried Thompson, approvingly. "And you've broken one cad's heart today."
"I'm sorry if I have," declared Dick, frankly, generously. "I wouldn't have had any heart in the fight if he hadn't started in to humiliate me. I wouldn't have cared so much for that, either. But he started to say something nasty about my parents, and I have as good parents as ever a boy had. Then I felt I simply had to fit a plug between Ripley's teeth."