“You’ve said it for me,” quoth he, very cheerily.
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH SAM PLAYS NEGOTIATOR
Sam, having given his word to the club, duly presented himself at the principal’s office.
Though he had rehearsed carefully the little speech he intended to make, he found himself stammering, and hesitating, and, finally, blurting out a rather incoherent summary of his case.
“It was the way things worked, sir—made me seem to say what I didn’t mean to say. And it was the same with the Trojan—with Walker, that is. Both of us were tangled, and twisted—and—and——”
“Yes?” the principal encouraged.
“Well, and tricked,” said Sam.
The head of the school glanced at him sharply. “That’s an ugly word, Parker,” he said curtly.
Sam reddened, but held his ground. “I don’t mean that it was intended so, but it worked like a trick, sir. If the book had been shown to the Trojan right at the start, and he’d been asked if it was his, he’d have said it was and made no bones about it, even if he hadn’t a notion how you came to have it. But he was asked first where his Cicero was. Now, he hadn’t missed it, and supposed it was with the rest of his books, and——”
“You’re making a statement, Parker, that it might be difficult to prove.”