“Someone didn’t want to tell, I suppose,” said Father Blossom. “Well, we don’t like to go against our friends’ wishes and sometimes they say we will get them into trouble if we do. But I think it is always best for a boy to tell his daddy, at least of his own share in anything like this. Next time you’ll know better what to do.”
Bobby was silent for a little while and then he asked timidly if the carpenter could have them arrested.
“I don’t know, Son, but I doubt it,” replied Father Blossom, who never pretended to know when he was not sure. “You want to say as little about this as possible and don’t talk unkindly of Mr. Bennett with the other boys. You were not wholly in the right, you know, and he has lost a valuable collection of tools and much fine work. It is natural that he should feel bitter. If you are patient, some day he will find out that he has been mistaken and I know he is man enough to admit it when he discovers he is wrong.”
Bobby was very quiet through dinner that night and he stayed closely to the house over Sunday. He did not tell even Meg about Mr. Bennett, though usually he told her everything that happened to him. Mother Blossom knew, of course, but she did not speak of it. It was not till Meg went to school Monday morning that she heard of the mischief the five boys were supposed to have done.
“Oh, Bobby!” she gasped when she met him at the school gate at noon. “Bobby, do you know what that awful Charlie Black is saying about you? He says you and Fred Baldwin and Palmer Davis and Bertrand Ashe and that Lambert boy who was visiting Bertrand over Thanksgiving, set fire to Mr. Bennett’s carpenter shop!”
“Charlie Black is a fibber!” said Bobby hotly. “We didn’t set fire to the shop.” And then, because there was no hope of satisfying Meg with anything less, he told her the whole story.
She was as indignant as any small sister would be and she assured Bobby that she knew he had not burned down the shop. But not everyone had so much faith, and as the news travelled through the school—as such news will—Bobby and the three other boys (Elmer Lambert had gone home Saturday afternoon and was safely out of trouble) had to submit to much teasing and questioning. Charlie Black and Tim Roon taunted Bobby openly with having set fire to the carpenter shop, and one recess a pitched battle started between Bobby and his friends and Charlie Black and Tim Roon and their chums.
Fighting was strictly forbidden in the school yard and the culprits were marched in disgrace to the principal’s office by one of the teachers who said that it was “a mercy Mr. Carter is here today and can punish you as you deserve.”
Mr. Carter asked a few questions, scolded them all for breaking the rule against fighting and then sent Tim and Charlie and their three followers down to the gymnasium to wash off the dirt, first warning them that they were not to molest Bobby or his chums or make any reference whatever to the carpenter shop fire again.
Then the principal kept Bobby and Fred Palmer and Bertrand a few minutes longer while he told them that he did not believe they were responsible for the fire and that he thought very few people would ever believe it. But, he said, it was foolish to pay any attention to taunts or teasing, and that when people were wrongly accused, if they were brave, it didn’t matter to them what unkind things were said about them.