“What did you do such a stupid thing for, Gerald?” he asked gently. “You might have got into all sorts of trouble.”
“Trouble!” sneered Gerald. “I guess I’ve had trouble, haven’t I? I guess a little more won’t matter. Besides, they can’t do anything to me here. I’ve left school.”
“Oh, no, you haven’t. You can’t leave school just by running away. Faculty can bring you back, Gerald, if it wants to. Until your father withdraws you from Yardley, you are a Yardley student and under the control of the Faculty. Of course I don’t know that they will want to bring you back. They’ll probably just expel you. But that won’t do. You don’t want them to do that. Your father would be awfully broken up about it. If you really must leave, the better way is to go back now before they find it out, and then write to your father to withdraw you. It will take a couple of weeks, but I guess you can wait that long, can’t you?”
“I’m not going back,” reiterated Gerald stubbornly. Dan made a gesture of impatience.
“You are going back,” he replied. “I’m going to take you back. You’re going back if I have to carry you all the way, and if it takes from now till Sunday.”
The two boys looked at each other a moment. Then Gerald’s eyes dropped. There was silence for a moment. Then:
“They’ll know I ran away,” he muttered.
“No, they won’t; not if we go back on the five o’clock train. Joe Chambers saw you, you know, but I told him you were just going to Sound View. He will forget all about it. Even if he suspects he will never say anything. You’ll have to explain missing recitations but you can do that all right.”
There was another silence. Gerald dug holes with the pen in the blotter. Finally:
“Faculty didn’t send you after me?” he asked.