But master Theodore was not to escape without his share of punishment.
As his own ill luck would have it,—perhaps it would be better to say, as a righteous retribution would have it,—as he was on his way home from school, and was crossing the park on which our house fronted, he fell in with three or four of his classmates, among them Rob Stevens, the witness of his thefts.
"What have you done with Jim?" asked one of the boys.
"He's getting it from the commander-in-chief," said Theodore exultantly. "He's lost his recess for a week, and is to be put down to class four if he gets into another of his rages, as he's sure to do; and now he's taking no end of a blowing-up. The commander sent me out so I wouldn't hear it. Good enough for him. I hope he'll get it hot and heavy."
"What did you get?" asked Rob.
"What did I get? Nothing; why should I?" responded Theodore, who had not the slightest idea of the way by which Jim had learned of his thefts, or that here was his accuser.
"Didn't you tell why Jim pitched into you when you saw he was gettin' held up for it?" asked Rob.
"No!" roared Theodore, partly in fear, partly in anger, for he now could not fail to see that Rob knew something, but how much he could not tell. "I hadn't any thing to tell, and hadn't done any thing to Jim,—to his high-mightiness Jim Grant Garfield Rutherford Livingstone Washington, the fellow with a whole dictionary-full of names, and not a right to one of them but the Jim. I just wish he would get into a dozen tantrums, till he gets expelled from the school."
"Nothin' mean about you, is there?" said one of the other boys indignantly, although he was still ignorant of the cause of Jim's provocation.
But this was too much for Rob.