Mr. Black was puffing and panting, he being Poetry-shaped as well as the stove, but he all of a sudden said, "Wait, boys, don't move! I want to get your pictures, right where you are, and as you are." Before we could decide to move or not to move, he whirled around, hurried over toward the shelf where we always set our dinner pails on school days, and came back with his camera which we hadn't noticed had been there. It was a very pretty camera and was the kind people used when they took a flashlight picture.
What on earth he wanted a picture of us for, I didn't know, unless it was so he could prove to anybody who didn't believe it, that we were a bunch of roughnecks. Quick as a blinding flash he had our
picture taken, and then he whirled around like he wanted to take some more pictures, and stopped and stared at the Christmas tree which I had stood back up in the corner, with the popcorn and paper chains tangled up on it, and at the erased blackboard and at his desk which didn't have any chairs upside down on it, and he said, "Who straightened up this room! Did you boys do that!"
"Yes, sir," I said, "we did; we wanted to prove to you that we didn't do it."
"You WHAT!"
"We wanted to prove to you that we didn't do it!" Little Jim said.
Mr. Black looked at Little Jim and at all of us like he thought we were even crazier than we felt, and he said, "Prove you didn't do what?"
"That we didn't put the board across the—OUCH!" Dragonfly started to talk, but stopped his sentence with an OUCH when I quick kicked him on the shin.
Mr. Black's eyes opened wide. Then for the first time he seemed to notice that the fire was going again and that the stove wasn't smoking so he scratched his head above his left ear, hurried over to the stove with the camera in his hand, set his camera on his big desk, opened the stove's door and shut it again, and just stood there, looking first at the stove and then at us, and I wished I knew what he was thinking; then I noticed that his eyes glanced off in the direction of the blackboard and to the beech switches which were lying on a ledge at the top. I could just see myself and all of us getting a licking in about seven jiffies. I started to edge toward the door, but he must have guessed what I was thinking, 'cause he barked a command to me which was "William Collins! Stop where you are!"
I stopped stock still, trembling inside of me, wondering what the word "drastic" was going to mean.