I just couldn't believe Dragonfly was that dumb—that he didn't know he oughtn't to tell where I'd gotten that scratch. I remembered with a mad thought that we'd had trouble with Dragonfly once before, on account of he had been friends with Shorty Long.
There wasn't any time to think or to remember anything else Dragonfly had done, but it certainly didn't feel good to have one of our own gang be what is called a "tattletale." Why he was supposed to be one of my very best friends!
I looked at Little Jim and Poetry to see what they thought and to see if they could think of anything that might help us from getting a licking with those leaveless beech switches. Poetry had a pucker on his forehead like he was thinking, or maybe trying to, and Little Jim had that innocent lamb-like look on his small face which when he looks like that, always reminds me of the picture his mom has on the wall above their piano in their house, of the Good Shepherd with a little lamb in his arms, with the Good Shepherd's hand on the little lamb's poll, which is the top of its head....
Then in a flash I was seeing Mr. Black again standing with one hand on his hip and the other holding onto one of the beech switches, he having laid the other switch down on Sylvia's little sister's desk, which was beside and behind him.
"And what," Mr. Black said to me, "were you doing on the schoolhouse roof?"
Well, I hated to tell him because I thought he wouldn't believe it, and another reason I hated to tell him was because if I did, it would mean I'd have to tell him somebody else had put the board ON the chimney, and that wouldn't be fair to Little Tom Till who was Bob's brother, and also on account of my mom was trying to get Shorty Long's mom to be a Christian, and I hated to be a tattletale
about Shorty and Bob, so I just stood there, without answering Mr. Black.
"Answer me!" he demanded. I could see he was getting really angry. I took one quick look at the door to see if I could dive past him and get there first and make a wild dash for home. I saw Little Jim's face and it reminded me again of the Bible picture above his piano, and that reminded me of a Bible verse I'd memorized, which was, "A soft answer turneth away wrath," and I thought of Mr. Black's pretty horse and said, politely, "Your horse is the prettiest horse I ever saw. I hope he didn't fall and break his leg."
I looked at Poetry and he winked at me, and said to Mr. Black, "It'll get dark pretty soon and if there's going to be a cold wave tonight, we'd better help you carry in plenty of wood. We'll help you bank the fire good."
But it was Little Jim who saved us from trouble, when he said what he said, and it was, "That was a good sermon this morning, wasn't it, Mr. Black? All of us are going to try not to be mad at you any more, and if we've done anything wrong, we're sorry. We hope you won't give us a licking, but if you do, we won't even get mad."