Just as the principal was putting the last of the coins into his satchel Mr. Drake leaned over to whisper:
"May I make a suggestion, sir?"
"Certainly," replied the principal coldly. "Yet I trust, Mr. Drake, that it won't be a suggestion for an easy way of accumulating more pennies than I already have."
"I think, if I were you, sir, I should pay no heed to this joke——-"
"Joke?" hissed the principal under his breath. "It's an outrage!"
"But intended only as a piece of pleasantry, sir. So I think it will pass off much better if you don't allow the students to see that they have annoyed you."
"Why? Do the students want to annoy me?" demanded Mr. Cantwell, in another angry undertone.
"I wouldn't say that," replied Mr. Drake. "But, if the young men discover that you are easily teased, they are sufficiently mischief-loving to try other jokes on you."
"Then a good friend of theirs would advise them not to do so," replied Mr. Cantwell, with a snap of his jaws.
That closed the matter for the time being. The first recitation period of the morning had been lost, but now the students, most of them finding difficulty in suppressing their chuckles, were sent to the various class rooms.