Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/295

Rh rushed distractedly this way and that, adding his voice to the general confusion.

“How do you know?” asked Bess, although a glance at Phil’s face was enough to assure  her that Ted’s statement was true.

“I’ll tell you,” said Ted, composing himself as well as he could on such short notice, while  Fred deliberately seated himself in the place  lately vacated by Phil.

“You see,” he began, “we boys have all been mad about Phil’s scrape, and we have just formed a regular league of detectives. This is the way I went to work. That marble came out of Phil’s aisle. Well, it came up out of it sort of cornerwise, and bounced off the other way. That showed the direction, so I was pretty sure which side of the aisle it started  from. Then, half-way down the aisle is where that little milksop of a Jimmy Harris sits. He never could tell a lie, just like Washington—don’t believe he knows enough! But he’s always looking round, and would have seen who fired it, if it had been anybody in front  of him, so I made up my mind ’twasn’t. Then I knew it must have been one of three