Then Mr. Black barked to me, "Go to the blackboard and get me those beech switches!" There was a tone of voice in his words which made me start toward the blackboard instead of toward the only door the schoolhouse had. I had to pass Dragonfly's open window which was still open, on account of there was still some smoke in the room. It would have been easy for me to make a dive out of that
window but I didn't want to leave the gang alone there with an angry teacher. I also had to pass close to the unabridged dictionary, and I all of a quick sudden decided if I knew what the word "drastic" meant, it might give me an idea what to do next, so I stopped, and quick turned the pages to the letter "D" and was trying to find drastic, when Mr. Black barked a question at me, and it was, "Young MAN! What are you doing?"
I jumped like I had been shot, but made myself say as calmly as I could, over my shoulder, "I just wanted to look up an important word first. I'll get the switches in just a minute."
"If the word is punishment," Mr. Black said to me angrily, "it's a noun, and it means beech switches.... You bring them to me!" And I knew I had to do it. I stopped looking in the dictionary, and feeling simply terrible inside of me, on account of not having done anything wrong on purpose, but knowing Mr. Black wouldn't believe us even if we told him, I got the switches and took them toward him, but was so nervous I dropped one of them.... Say, Little Jim who is very quick when he makes up his mind to do something, made a dive for the floor, picked up the switch I'd dropped and quick took the other one out of my hand, and handed them both to Mr. Black and said to him very politely, "Here you are, sir, with all the old brown dead leaves gone—every one of them."
"What on earth?" I thought, and looked at Little Jim's face and then at Mr. Black's.
Say our teacher's face had all of a sudden the queerest expression on it, and he looked at Little Jim like he wondered "What on earth?" himself.
Then he looked at me, and his face was hard again.
Right that second I remembered my torn trousers, and the place where they were torn clear through to the skin. The scratch was still hurting, so I said, "If you're—if you're going to lick me, d-don't hit me on my scratched thigh!" I turned sidewise to him, stooped over part way, and showed him my torn trousers and the reddish scratch on my thigh, which for some reason didn't look half as bad as I wished it did, right that minute.
Mr. Black frowned, and asked fast, "Where'd you get that scratch!" and Dragonfly said, "When he was up on the—OUCH!" I stopped Dragonfly with a kick on his shin again.
"What's that? Where'd you say he got it?" Mr. Black barked his question to Dragonfly, and before any of us could stop him, Dragonfly had said, "On the schoolhouse roof."