"If Mr. Fletcher did as I wished him, he'd give each of you boys a good round flogging before you went to bed, a lot of disobedient, ungrateful, untruthful, and untrustworthy scamps!"
Possibly this was enough for Ellis, for he subsided and was heard no more, but a sound of weeping arose. It was the grief of Charlie Griffin. Placing the lamp upon a desk, Mr. Fletcher put his head out of the window beside his wife's.
"I'm not going to open the hall door for you at this time of night. Your friends came through the window, and you can follow your friends."
They followed their friends, Ellis coming first; Griffin, with not unnatural bashfulness, preferring to keep in the background. Mrs. Fletcher's uplifted hands and cry of astonishment greeted Ellis, who was indeed a notable example of the possibilities of dirt as applied to the person, but Griffin's entry was followed by the silence of petrified amazement.
His friends' attempts at disfigurement were altogether unsuccessful as compared to the success which had attended his. They were dandies compared to him. It was difficult at a first glance to realize that he was a boy, or indeed a human being of any kind. He was covered with a combination of weeds, green slime, particoloured filth, and yellow clay; the water dripped from the more prominent portions of his frame; his clothes were glued to his limbs; he was hatless; his face and hair were plastered with the aforesaid slime; and, to crown it all, he was convulsed with a sorrow which lay too deep for words.
"Griffin!" was all that the headmaster's wife could gasp. "Charlie Griffin!"
"Where have you been?" asked Mr. Fletcher.
"I've been in the pond," gasped Griffin, half choked with mud and tears.
"In the pond? What pond?"
"Pa-almer's po-ond!"