Mr. Hanks played with his pen for a minute. Then he looked up with a helpless smile at Gil.
“What—what could I do?” he asked.
“Why, sir, the first time any fellow does anything in class he shouldn’t, call him down.”
“Call him down?” questioned Mr. Hanks, at a loss.
“Reprimand him, I mean. Then if he doesn’t behave send him to Mr. Gordon. Mr. Gordon will stand back of you, sir; he always does. Take Gary for instance, sir. If you did that just once with him he’d come back as meek as a kitten.”
“And what would Mr. Gordon do to him?”
Gil shrugged his shoulders. “He might do most anything, sir. It would depend on what Gary had done. He might put him on probation, he might send him home for the rest of the term, he might expel him for keeps.”
“But I shouldn’t want anything like that to happen to the boy,” said Mr. Hanks in alarm. “He has been very trying to me; in fact, I have sometimes suspected that in a way he has been at the bottom of most of my troubles, what I might call a ringleader, Benton.”
“Yes, sir, that might be,” replied Gil gravely.
“Yes. But even so I should very much dislike to be the cause of his being sent from school even temporarily.”