“What! You here in this rowdy business, Frank Langdon!” exclaimed the other, as though more than surprised. “I shall have to see your father and make complaint, if the Chief of Police declines to back me up and arrest a few of you.”
“As to that, Mr. Chase, I will tell my father all about it as soon as he comes home from the bank. I know what he will say, though, and it doesn’t frighten me one bit. My father was a boy himself once, not like some people who forget that they once used to play themselves.”
“Don’t be impudent to me, boy!” snapped the old miser angrily.
“I don’t mean to be so, Mr. Chase,” Frank continued; “and as for your window, we will send a glazier around right away to put in a fresh pane, and pay for it, too. I’m sure that is all you could expect from us.”
“That’s a measly shame, Frank!” objected Bluff impetuously.
“When it was Andy Lasher who broke the window,” added Jerry, filled with righteous indignation. “You only ducked, Frank, when you saw it headed your way. Perhaps Mr. Chase thinks you should have stood up and got that snowball with the stone in its heart smashed in your eye. It isn’t fair for you to pay the bill. Let him go after Andy.”
“No, I prefer settling the account myself, and not having any trouble about it,” Frank told his objecting chums. “Besides, we’ve had enough fun out of the business to stand a little expense like that. The innocent often have to suffer for the guilty.”
Some of the bystanders at this point tried to convince Mr. Chase that Frank was entirely innocent of the whole transaction; but the miser, acting on the principle that “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” declined to let the generous offer Frank had made slip from his grasp.
“Someone’s got to pay for my broken window,” he insisted stubbornly, “and these boys admit they were connected with the rowdy crew that made themselves a disgrace to the town in front of my door. I shall expect him to fulfill his offer, which you heard him make, Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Mole. The sooner that window pane is replaced the better I shall be pleased. That’s enough.”
With that he turned his back upon the group and hurried to reenter his house, as though fearful lest some of the spectators might endeavor to shame him out of accepting pay from an innocent party.