CHAPTERIII
Into the lower halls and corridors of the school poured the children. The last bell was still clanging, and they would not be marked late if they reached their classrooms before the last peal. The bell would ring for several minutes yet.
On all sides, as the boys and girls hurried in, could be heard talks and gasps of astonishment, not unmixed with fear, about the breaking of the church window.
“Oh, did you see it?”
“Did you hear it?”
“Didn’t it make a big crash!”
“What’ll the church people say?”
“I guess that window must ’a’ cost a thousand dollars!”
“Who did it?”
This last question was the one most often asked.
But no one seemed to know, or, if any one did, he or she was not telling about it. Nan hurried with Flossie and Freddie to their classroom, and then she hastened back toward her own. Bert was in Nan’s room, and, seeing her brother just before she entered the door, Nan whispered:
“Bert, did you break the church window?”
“No,” he answered, “I didn’t. Of course I didn’t do it!”
“Do you know who did it?”
Bert did not answer for a second or two. For the moment he and Nan were by themselves, just outside their classroom door. Then Bert looked down the corridor and saw Danny Rugg and Sam Todd coming along.
“Do you know who did it?” repeated Nan.
“Maybe I do,” Bert answered slowly. “And maybe I don’t,” he added, as Nan gave a gasp of surprise. “Anyhow, I’m not going to tell.”
That was all there was time to say. The last bell was giving its final strokes, and Bertand his sister hurried to their seats. Danny and Sam, with other boys and girls, also hastened in to their room; and then came silence, for they were not, of course, allowed to whisper in class.
The pupils had been sitting quietly a minute or two when an electric bell in the room rang. This was the signal for the children to march to the big assembly hall where the morning exercises were held.
“Attention!” called Miss Skell, who taught Bert and Nan. “Rise! Turn! March!”
There was the tramping of a hundred feet and the children were on their way to the auditorium.
It was at the close of the exercises, after the Bible reading and the singing of patriotic songs, that the principal, Mr. James Tarton, stepped to the edge of the platform and said:
“Boys and girls, I have an unpleasant announcement to make. I am very sorry to have to speak of it. But an accident happened this morning. Perhaps some of you may know what it was.”
By the gasps and murmurs that ranthrough the room it was easy to tell that a number of the pupils knew about what the principal was going to speak.
“Some one—a boy I think it must have been, for I doubt if a girl could throw so hard and straight. Some boy broke the rule about snowballing within a block of the school,” went on Mr. Tarton, “and threw a ball, or a chunk of ice, against one of the stained-glass windows of the church. The window was broken, and of course must be paid for. It is only right that the boy who broke it should pay for it. Now I am going to ask the boy who threw the snowball against the church window to be man enough to stand up and admit it. He will not be punished if he frankly confesses, but of course he or his father will have to pay for the broken glass.”
Mr. Tarton stopped speaking and waited. It grew very still and quiet in the room. If any one had dropped a pin it could have been heard in the farthest corner. But no one dropped a pin. Nor did any one speak. Nor did any boy stand up to say he had broken the window.
The silence continued. The teachers, sitting in a row back of Mr. Tarton on the platform, looked at the faces of the boys and girls in front of them.
“Well,” said the principal in a low voice, “I am waiting.”
Still no one got up. Some of the boys and girls began to shift uneasily in their seats and shuffled their feet. They were getting what an older person would call “nervous.”
“It does not seem,” went on Mr. Tarton, “that the boy who broke the window is going to be man enough to own up to it. I dislike to do this, but I must ask if any one here knows anything about it. I mean did any of you see any one throw a snowball at the church window?”
There was a further silence, but only for a few seconds. Then up went the hand of Sam Todd. Some of the girls gasped loudly, seeming to guess what was coming next.
“Well, Sammie,” said Mr. Tarton kindly, “what do you know about breaking the church window? Did you do it?”
“No, sir!”
“Do you know who did?”
“Yes, sir!”
More gasps of surprise.
“Who broke the window?” asked the principal.
“Bert Bobbsey!” said Sam in a firm voice, and Nan was so excited that she cried out:
“Oh!”
Nor did the principal or any of the teachers scold her. But Bert was not one to sit quietly and be falsely accused. In an instant he was on his feet, raising his hand that he might get permission to speak.
“Well, Bert,” said Mr. Tarton quietly.
“I didn’t break that window!” cried the Bobbsey lad. “I didn’t even throw a snowball toward it. I didn’t do it at all!” His face was very red.
“Sammie, did you actually see Bert Bobbsey throw a snowball at the stained-glass window and break it?” asked Mr. Tarton, and his voice was stern.
“No, sir, I didn’t really see him break the window,” Sam replied. “But I saw a snowballin his hand. I saw him raise his hand to throw the snowball, and right after that I heard the glass crack. Bert Bobbsey did it!”
“I did not!” exclaimed Bert.
“Quiet! That will do!” the principal called, raising his hand for silence. “We will not go further into the matter here. Bert, come to my office after school, and you also, Sam. We will talk about the broken window then. The classes will now go to their own rooms.”
The teacher at the piano began to play a lively march, but there was not much spring in the steps of Bert and Nan Bobbsey as they filed back to Miss Skell’s room. Bert was hurt and indignant that Sam should accuse him of breaking the window. Nan, too, felt sure that her brother had not done it.
“Don’t let him scare you, Bert!” whispered Charlie Mason, one of Bert’s best chums, to the Bobbsey lad in the corridor. “We know you didn’t do it.”
Of course it was against the rule for Charlie to whisper thus in the hall, but he was notcaught at it. Bert was glad his chum had spoken to him.
“Now, children,” said Miss Skell, when her pupils were again in their seats, “we are going to forget all about the broken church window. Mr. Tarton will attend to that. And please forget that Bert has been mentioned as doing it.
“I, for one,” and Miss Skell smiled down at the blushing Bobbsey boy, “don’t believe Bert would do such a thing. I think Sammie must be mistaken. Now we shall go on with our lessons.”
Neither Danny nor Sam were in the room with Bert and Nan, and for this the two Bobbseys were glad. Sam and his crony were in the same grade with Bert and Nan, but, because of its size, the class recited in two different rooms under separate teachers.
It took a little time for the class to quiet down after the unusual excitement, but at length the recitations were proceeded with.
It was when Bert and Nan were hurrying home at the noon recess with Flossie and Freddie that Nan said to her brother:
“Who broke that window, Bert? If you know you ought to tell, especially since they say you did it.”
“Nobody says I did it except that sneak, Sam Todd, and he isn’t telling the truth!” exclaimed her twin.
“Do you know who did it?” persisted Nan. Flossie and Freddie had run on a little way ahead to play with children from their own class, and did not hear what the two older Bobbseys were saying.
“I’m not sure,” answered Bert, looking about to make certain no one was near enough to catch what he said, “I didn’t actually see him throw the snowball, but I believe Danny Rugg broke that window.”
“Oh, Bert, do you, really?” gasped Nan.
“I sure do! I can’t prove it, for I didn’t see him. But he had a snowball in his hand and he chucked it away when he was near the church. And right after that the window broke. But I’m not going to tell.”
“Oh, Bert, maybe you ought to! Do you remember the time Mr. Ringley’s shoe store window was broken?”
“Yes,” answered Bert, “I remember that time.”
“They said you did that,” went on Nan. “But afterward old Mr. Roscoe said he saw Danny Rugg throw the chunk of ice that broke the window. And when Danny found out Mr. Roscoe had seen him, then Danny owned up that he did it. Don’t you remember?”
“Yes, he broke Mr. Ringley’s window,” admitted Bert, speaking of something that happened in the first book of this series, “The Bobbsey Twins.” In that volume you meet Danny Rugg as a bad boy, who was very unfriendly toward Nan and Bert. Then, after a fight, Danny seemed to have reformed, and he became a better boy.
“He’s as bad as ever—breaking windows and things like that!” went on Nan.
“We don’t know for sure that he did it,” cautioned Bert.
“It would be just like him to do it!” declared Nan. “Are you going to tell mother?”
“Sure!”
And when Mrs. Bobbsey heard what had happened she advised Bert to speak nothing but the truth and not to accuse Danny unless he was sure that lad had broken the window.
“That’s the trouble,” sighed Bert. “I can’t be sure, but I feel pretty certain that Danny did it.”
“It will all come out right,” his mother told him. “And of course you must not say that you broke the window if you didn’t. Mr. Tarton is too fair a man to let you be accused without good proof.”
And it was not very good proof that Sam Todd could give when later in the day he and Bert went to the principal’s office. Sam told his story over again.
“Yes,” Bert admitted, “I did have some snowballs in my hand. Danny Rugg and Sam had been throwing at John Marsh, and he ran to where I was. I was going to help John fight, but there wasn’t any need. And I tossed away my snowballs before I got within a block of the school.”
“So did I,” said Sam. “And I think Isaw you throw yours at the church window, Bert. Maybe you didn’t mean to break it, but you did.”
“No, I didn’t!” insisted Bert stoutly.
“I think we had better have Danny Rugg in here to see what he knows about it,” suggested Mr. Tarton. “It would not be fair to punish Bert on just your say-so, Sammie. You might be honestly mistaken. Go out and see if you can find Danny and bring him in here.”
But there was no need to go after Danny Rugg. Just as Sam was leaving the principal’s office Danny came hurrying in, much excited.
“Oh, oh, Mr. Tarton!” he exclaimed.
“What is it?” asked the head of the school. And Bert found himself wondering whether Danny was going to confess having broken the stained-glass window of the church.
“Oh, Mr. Tarton!” gasped Danny. “I’ve lost my gold ring! My birthday ring is gone!” and he held up his hand. No longer did the gold band glitter on it.