“Sanker! was he the thief?”
“Hold your tongue, Ludlow,” returned Sanker, in a fright. “I told you I’d give him a chance again, didn’t I? But I never thought he would come back to take it.”
“I would have believed it of any fellow rather than of Vale.”
Sanker turned his face sharp, and looked at me. “Oh, would you?” said he, after a pause. “Well, then, you’d better believe it of any other. Mind you do. It will be safer, Johnny Ludlow.”
He walked away into a group of them, as if afraid of my saying more. I turned out at the door leading to the playground, and came upon Tod in the porch.
“What was that you and Sanker were saying about Vale, Johnny?”
I was aware that I ought not to tell him; I knew I ought not: but I did. Tod read me always as one reads a book, and I had never attempted to keep from him any earthly thing.
“Sanker says it was Vale. About the things lost last half. He told me, you know, that he had discovered who it was that took them.”
“What, he the thief! Vale?”
“Hush, Tod. Give him another chance, as Sanker says.”