Rupert, without looking down, said quietly, "Quit that now--I won't, I tell ye," and went through certain automatic movements of dislodging Johnny as if he were a mere impeding puppy.
"What's the matter, Johnny ?" said the master, to whom these gyrations were not unfamiliar.
Johnny only replied by a new grip of his brother's trousers.
"Well, sir," said Rupert, slightly recovering his dimples and his readiness, "Johnny, yer, wants me to tell ye something.

Ef he wasn't the most original self-cocking, God-forsaken liar in Injin Spring--ef he didn't lie awake in his crib mornin's to invent lies fer the day, I wouldn't mind tellin' ye, and would hev told you before.

However, since you ask, and since you think you saw somebody around the school-house, Johnny yer allows that Seth Davis is spyin' round and followin' ye wherever you go, and he dragged me down yer to see it.

He says he saw him doggin' ye." "With a knife and pithtolth," added Johnny's boundless imagination, to the detriment of his limited facts.
Mr.Ford looked keenly from the one to the other, but rather with a suspicion that they were cognizant of his late fracas than belief in the truth of Johnny's statement.
"And what do YOU think of it, Rupert ?" he asked carelessly.
"I think, sir," said Rupert, "that allowin'-- for onct--that Johnny ain't lying, mebbee it's Cressy McKinstry that Seth's huntin' round, and knowin' that she's always runnin' after you"-- he stopped, and reddening with a newborn sense that his fatal truthfulness had led him into a glaring indelicacy towards the master, hurriedly added: "I mean, sir, that mebbee it's Uncle Ben he's jealous of, now that he's got rich enough for Cressy to hev him, and knowin' he comes to school in the afternoon perhaps"-- "'Tain't either!" broke in Johnny promptly.

"Theth's over ther beyond the thchool, and Crethy's eatin' ithecream at the bakerth with Uncle Ben." "Well, suppose she is, Seth don't know it, silly!" answered Rupert, sharply.