"No." Abbott was eager to prove his innocence. "I haven't seen a sign of her, but I'm looking every minute—glad you're here."
Confidences were impracticable, because of a tousled-headed, ink- stained pupil who gloomed in a corner.
"Why, hello there, Jakey!" cried Clinton, disconcerted; he had hoped that Fran's subjugation might take place without witnesses. "What are you doing here, hey?"
"Waitin' to be whirped," was the defiant rejoinder.
"Tell the professor you're sorry for what you've done, so you can run
along," said the chairman of the board persuasively.
"Naw, I ain't sorry," returned Jakey, hands in pockets. Then bethinking himself—"But I ain't done nothin'."
Abbott said regretfully, "He'll have to be whipped."
Clinton nodded, and sat down solemnly, breathing hard. Abbott was restlessly pacing the floor, and Bob was staring at him unwinkingly, when the door opened and in came Fran.
Abbott frowned heavily, but the wrinkles in his brow could not mar the attractiveness of his handsome young face. He was too fine looking, the chairman reflected uneasily, for his duties. His figure was too athletic, his features too suggestive of aristocratic tastes and traditions. Clinton wished he would thrust a pen behind his ear. As for himself, after one brief glance at Fran, he fumbled for his spectacles.
Fran walked up to Abbott hesitatingly, and spoke with the indistinctness of awed humility. "You are to punish me," she explained, "by making me work out this original proposition"—showing the book—"and you are to keep me here till I get it."