ose, but knowing Mr. Black wouldn't believe us even if we
told him, I got the switches and took them toward him, but was so
nervous I dropped one of them.... Say, Little Jim who is very quick
when he makes up his mind to do something, made a dive for the floor,
picked up the switch I'd dropped and quick took the other one out of
my hand, and handed them both to Mr. Black and said to him very
politely, "Here you are, sir, with all the old brown dead leaves
gone--every one of them."

"What on _earth_?" I thought, and looked at Little Jim's face and then
at Mr. Black's.

Say our teacher's face had all of a sudden the queerest expression on
it, and he looked at Little Jim like he wondered "What on _earth_?"
himself.

Then he looked at me, and his face was hard again.

Right that second I remembered my torn trousers, and the place where
they were torn clear through to the skin. The scratch was still
hurting, so I said, "If you're--if you're going to lick me, d-don't
hit me on my scratched thigh!" I turned sidewise to him, stooped over
part way, and showed him my torn trousers and the reddish scratch on
my thigh, which for some reason didn't look half as bad as I wished it
did, right that minute.

Mr. Black frowned, and asked fast, "Where'd you get that scratch!" and
Dragonfly said, "When he was up on the--OUCH!" I stopped Dragonfly
with a kick on his shin again.

"What's that? Where'd you say he got it?" Mr. Black barked his
question to Dragonfly, and before any of us could stop him, Dragonfly
had said, "On the schoolhouse roof."

I just couldn't believe Dragonfly was that dumb--that he didn't know
he oughtn't to tell where I'd gotten that scratch. I remembered with a
mad thought that we'd had trouble with Dragonfly once before, on
account of he had been friends with Shorty Long.

There wasn't any time to think or to remember anything else Dragonfly
had done, but it certainly didn't feel good to have one of our own
gang be what is called a "tattletale." Why he was supposed to be one
of my very best friends!

I looked at Little Jim and Poetry to see what they thought and to see
if they could think of anything that might help us from getting a
licking with those leaveless beech switches. Poetry had a pucker on
his forehead like he was thinking, or maybe trying to, and Little Jim
had that innocent lamb-like look on his small face which when he looks
like that, always reminds me of the picture his mom has on the wall