The Doctor heard the recital to the end, while Mr. Butler smiled sarcastically and knowingly, glancing from the boys to the stern old gentleman who was cross-questioning them. After deliberating a full minute, Dr. Hobart spoke again:
"You said a moment ago that you were particularly anxious to get the cat for Mrs. Bowser. Why were you particularly anxious?"
"Because," blurted out Jimmy, "she helped us out of a scrape once." He could have bitten his tongue off after he had said it, but it was too late to draw back.
"So," said the Doctor, pricking up his ears. "And what was the scrape?"
"Oh, just an accident," said Frank.
"Yes, and what kind of an accident?" There was nothing for it but to tell the story of the wrong box which had reached Mrs. Bowser's house the winter before. Frank told it in a straightforward fashion, but he could feel the blood mounting to his face. The Doctor stiffened perceptibly as he listened. Frank refrained from bringing either the Codfish or Lewis into the story.
"So you are in the habit of practical joking?" he said coldly. "It is a poor business, my young gentlemen, and it must be stopped. We will have no practical jokers around Queen's School. This is a place for study and not for pranks. Your case has been much weakened by what I have just heard. It seems to me I remember, too, Armstrong, that you played a practical joke on some one by pretending to be drowned last year, did you not, and disturbed the whole school? I remember you were before me at that time."
"He took the place of a boy who was being hazed," Jimmy burst out hotly, "and it served the hazers right."
"Yes, Turner, perhaps it did, but I remember it disturbed the School. In the face of the tendency for practical joking that these incidents seem to prove," turning to Frank, "can you expect me to believe you are guiltless in the matter of the bell?" The tone was sharp and the glance which accompanied it keen and penetrating, but Frank replied steadily: "We had nothing to do with the bell, sir."
"Is this your fur glove, Armstrong?" said the Doctor, opening a drawer of his desk and producing a glove which Frank thought he recognized as his own. He stepped forward, looked it over carefully, and finally turned the wristband back, where, plainly inked, were the letters "F. A."