"And do you remember what you said to the class when you found that mule at your desk, in the morning?" the scamp would ask, with a chuckle, perhaps.
"No, what?"
"Ah, I remember it as though it were yesterday; how you came bustling into the room. You saw the mule. We were all boiling inside. You did not scowl. You did not rant. You did not call down upon our heads the venging hand of a just heaven. You just turned to us as calm as you are now...."
The old professor would gurgle here, with rare delight.
" ... and said, 'young gentlemen, I perceive that you have already been provided with an instructor quite competent to teach you all you will ever be able to learn!' And then you walked out of the room with a polite 'good-morning.'"
Here the former student would roar with laughter.
"You don't tell me," the old professor would exclaim. "You don't tell me I said that! Well, well, well; that was rather hard on you boys, wasn't it? I'd forgotten all about it. I—I just remembered the mule!"
"And do you recall," the man who was a boy, again would ask, "how you found all the wood from the big wood-box in the south-wing corridor piled against your door?"
The old professor would wrinkle his forehead here and stare thoughtfully at the floor.
"No, I don't seem to recollect," he would say.