“Better have your mother sew up the holes in your pockets,” suggested Raleigh.
“Or you might fasten a string to your knife and tie it into your pocket,” added another.
“I tell you, the things are taken out of my desk,” insisted Barber, “and somebody does it after school. I like fun as well as anybody, but I’m sick of this kind, and I think it’s time now for whoever did it to hand over my notebook.”
“Is it so, for a fact, Barber?” said Hamlin, walking over to the other’s seat. “Have you been losing things out of your desk—honest Injun?”
“I have so,” replied Barber.
“And I, too. I left a gold pen in my desk last week, and the next morning it was gone,” said Lee.
Upon inquiry, it proved that nearly all the boys present had lost something from their desks within a few weeks, and several had lost small change or car-tickets from the pockets of overcoats left in the dressing-room during school hours.
“We must tell Mr. Horton,” said Hamlin. “It won’t do to have this sort of thing going on.”
“Oh, I say!” broke out Dixon, “you don’t really believe that anybody’s been thieving here, do you? I’m always thinking I’ve lost something, and finding it a week or two later, where I’d poked it away, an’ forgotten all about it.”
Barber shook his head.