“I’ll break every bone in your body if you do,” said Will Palmer.
Notty suddenly remembered that his mother had sent him to the market to order something, so he hurried away from society that he had mistakenly supposed might be congenial, while Ned Johnston made the round of the residences of the various boys who had been at school with Paul. The end of it all was that the entire school met in the school-yard that evening after supper for the purpose of formally drafting resolutions of sympathy. Condolence also was suggested by Sam Wardwell, but Canning Forbes said that the meeting should not make a fool of itself if he could prevent it.
If the roll of Mr. Morton’s school had been called that evening at that meeting, not a single absentee would have been reported. Even Charlie Gunter, who had begun half an hour before to shake with a chill, was present; and although his remarks were somewhat jerky, and his sentences bitten all to pieces by his chattering teeth, he spoke so feelingly that no one manifested the slightest inclination to laugh.
It had been intended that the meeting should be organized in as grand style as any town-meeting to consider the dog-tax question had ever been, but somehow there was a general unloosening of tongues, and no one thought to move that the assemblage should be called to order.
“It’s easy enough now to see why Paul played so splendidly in that tableau of ‘Civilization,’” said Will Palmer.
“Yes, indeed, it is,” said Canning Forbes; “and easy, too, to understand why he fought so hard against taking the part when every one asked him to do it.”
“No wonder he wasn’t afraid to walk beside the prisoner after the deputy-sheriff had captured him,” said Sam Wardwell. “I don’t believe I’d have been afraid myself, if my father had been the counterfeiter. And say, Mr. Morton came into the store this morning and offered father a five-dollar bill to make up his loss by the bad bill that Paul’s father passed on him, and what do you think father said?”
THE MEETING IN THE SCHOOL-YARD.
“We give it up,” said Canning Forbes, quickly. “Tell us what it was.”