“Is that true? You didn’t know that Doctor Handley’s residence stood at the corner, across from the school entrance?”
“No, sir,” answered the boy earnestly. “I’d never been there before, sir.”
“But the others? They must have known.”
“The others?” stammered Willard.
“Yes,” replied the Doctor gently. “You said ‘we’ a moment ago.”
Willard reddened. “I—I corrected myself,” he answered.
Doctor McPherson smiled whimsically and shook his head. “I wouldn’t call it a correction, Harmon. You see, it’s extremely unlikely that you would have engaged in such a—such an amusement by yourself. Defacing property in that manner is ‘gang work’: I’ve never known it otherwise.”
Willard gulped. “Yes, sir. Well, none of us knew that wall was Doctor—Doctor—”
“Handley’s?” asked the Principal helpfully.
“Yes, sir. We wouldn’t have done it for anything if we had known. We—we just wanted to get even with those—fellows for what they did to us last year. They painted green signs all around town here, sir, and we thought it was perfectly fair to get back at them. That’s all there was to it.”