"Why, sir, what prop—"
"Descending," cried the Professor, "to vandalism—to a vandalism which I have again and again proscribed. Over and over I have said, and within your hearing, that I would not countenance the defacing of desks!"
Bertram Weatherby glanced furtively at Peter Wynne. Peter had sighed.
"Over and over," said the Professor, "I have told you that they were not your property or mine, but the property of the people whose representative I am. Yet here I find you marring their tops with jack-knives, carving great, sprawling letters—"
"But, sir, at Rug—"
"Great, ugly letters, I say, sprawling and slashed so deeply that the polished surface can never be restored."
"At Rug—"
"What will visitors say? What will your parents say if they come, as parents should, to see the property for which they pay a tribute to the state?"
"But, sir, at Rug—"
"Bertram, I am grieved. I am grieved, Peter, that boys reared to care for the neatness of their persons should prove so slovenly in the matter of the property a great republic intrusts to their use and care."