The others agreed—"He's a trustee, anyway," Gyp explained—though just how much a trustee had to do with these complicated questions of school honor none of them knew.
And, as though Uncle Johnny always sprang up from the earth at the very instant his girls needed him, he came up the winding drive in his red roadster. They hailed him. He brought the car to a quick stop.
"Uncle Johnny, we want you to decide something for us! Please get out and come over here."
He stared at the serious faces. What tragedy had shadowed the customary gladness of the last day of school? He let them lead him to the old elm.
"If you'll please sit down and—and pretend you're not—our uncle but sort of a—a judge—and listen, we'll tell you."
"Dear me," Uncle Johnny murmured weakly, sitting down on the slope. "This is bad for rheumatism and gray trousers but—I'll listen."
Isobel began the story with the building of the snowman; Gyp took it up. Dramatically, with an eloquence reminiscent of that meeting of the Ravens when the ill-fated lot had fallen to Jerry, she explained how "for the honor of the school" Jerry had shouldered Ginny's punishment. Peggy Lee interrupted to say that she thought Miss Gray had made an awful fuss about nothing, but Ginny hushed her quickly. Then the story came to the winning of the Award.
"Two points—Jerry only needed two points. And she lost ten as a punishment about the snowman. Don't you see—she's really the winner?"
Uncle Johnny had listened to the story with careful gravity; inwardly he was tortured with the desire to laugh. But he could not affront these girls so seriously bent on keeping unsullied that pure white thing they called honor. "Oh, youth—youth!" he thought, loving them the more for their precious earnestness.
"And—it's such a mix-up, we don't know what to do. If I knew who had given the prize I'd go straight to him," exclaimed Ginny bravely.