"The lad is right, Mr. Darrow," he said, in his quiet, drawling way. "I wouldn't punish him before the scholars if I were you, sir."
"What's this? You interfere!" flared out the pedagogue.
"Don't take it that way, Mr. Darrow," said Graham. "You are displeased, and justly so, sir, but boys will be boys. Andy is the right kind of a lad, I assure you, only in the wrong kind of a place. They did the same thing with me when I was young. If they hadn't, I wouldn't be here spelling out words of two syllables at twenty-eight years of age."
Andy's eyes glistened at the big scholar's friendliness. A murmur of approbation ran round the room.
Silently the pedagogue fumed. The disaffection of the occasion, mild and respectful as it was, disarmed him. He regarded Andy with a despairing look. Then he straightened up with great dignity.
"Take your seat, sir!" he ordered Andy severely, marching back to his own desk.
"Yes, sir," said Andy humbly.
"Pack up your books."
Andy looked up in dismay. The fixed glint in the schoolmaster's eye told him that this new move meant no fooling.
"Now you may go home," resumed Mr. Darrow, as Andy had obeyed his first mandate.