"Oh, don't, Bobby!" begged Dora Lockwood. "You are so reckless."

"Just the same, I feel it in my bones that Hester is going to kick over the traces," said Bobby grimly.

"If only Margit Salgo had been allowed to have the part," groaned Dorothy.

"It's Gee Gee's fault if the play is a failure," snapped Bobby.

Never had the disagreeable teacher at Central High been so little liked as at this time. They blamed Miss Carrington more than they did Hester.

As the party of troubled girls left the school-house on this particular afternoon, Lily Pendleton ran after them.

"What do you think has happened?" she cried.

"It's something bad, of course," groaned Nellie Agnew.

"Who is hurt?" asked Laura.

"It isn't that," said Lily. "But poor Purt Sweet!"

"Now what has he done?" asked Jess.

"It is what they say he has done, not what he really has done," wailed Lily. "The police have been to his house. And what do you think?"

"I bet his mother's had a fit!" exclaimed Bobby, in an undertone.

"The police accuse Purt of running down that man on Market Street the other Sat.u.r.day night," said Lily warmly. "And Purt doesn't know anything more about it than a baby! Isn't it awful, girls?"

CHAPTER XVIII

WHERE WAS PURT?

The police examination of Purt Sweet was no light matter. Two of Centerport's detective force had been working on the case ever since the stranger had been knocked down on Market Street, and, like Chet Belding and his friends, the detectives finally had come to the conclusion that Prettyman Sweet's automobile was the only Perriton car in the city that had not been in storage on that night.

The detectives' visit to the Sweet residence, and Purt's later call upon the Chief of Police at his command, were dreadfully shocking to the boy's mother. Purt had to rea.s.sure her and insist that he was not going to be arrested and sent to jail at once; so he had not much time to be frightened himself. Indeed, he came out in rather good colors on this particular occasion.

The boy's father had long since died. Purt had been indulged by his mother to a ridiculous degree, and as a usual thing Purt's conversation and his activities were ridiculed by his schoolmates.

"This disgrace will kill me, Prettyman!" wailed Mrs. Sweet.

"Where does the disgrace come in," pleaded poor Purt, "when I haven't really done anything?"

"But they say you have!"

"I can't help what they say."

"You were out that evening with the car. I remember it very well," his mother declared.

"What of it? I wasn't on Market Street the whole evening," grumbled the boy.

"Where were you then?" she demanded.

It seemed as though everybody else asked Purt Sweet that question, from the Chief of Police down; and it was the one question the boy would not answer.

He grew red, and sputtered, and begged the question, every time anybody sought to discover just where he was with the automobile on that Sat.u.r.day evening after dinner. Even when Chief Donovan threatened him with arrest, Purt said:

"If I should tell you it wouldn't do any good. It would not relieve me of suspicion and would maybe only make trouble for other people. I was out with our car, and that is all there is to it. But I did not run that man down. I was not on Market Street."

He stuck to this. And his honest manner impressed the head of the police force. Besides, Mrs. Sweet was very wealthy, and if Purt was arrested she would immediately bail him and would engage the best counsel in the county to defend her son. It is one thing to accuse a person of a fault. As Chief Donovan very well knew, it is an entirely different matter to prove such accusation.

The news of Purt's trouble was not long in getting to Short and Long in the hospital. Chet and Lance really thought the smaller boy would express some satisfaction over Purt's trouble. But to their surprise Billy took up cudgels for the dandy as soon as he was told that the police suspected him of the offense.

"What's the matter with you, Short?" demanded the big fellow. "You've been sure Purt was guilty all the time."

"I don't care!" declared Billy. "He's one of us fellows, isn't he?"

"Admitted he goes to Central High," Chet said.

"But he isn't one of our gang," Lance added.

"I don't care! The police are always too fresh," said Billy, who had reason for believing that the Centerport police sometimes made serious mistakes.

Billy had had his own experience, as related in "The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna."

"Then you don't believe Purt did it?" demanded Lance.

"No, I don't. I was mistaken," declared Short and Long. "Purt's all right"

"Wow! Wow!" murmured Chet.

"See how he brought me here in his car when I was hurt. And look at the stuff Purt's given me while I've been here," said Billy excitedly. "He'd never have hurt that man and run away without seeing what he'd done. No, sir!"

"Crackey, Billy!" said Chet, "you've turned square around."

"I know I have. And I ought to be ashamed of myself for ever distrusting Purt," said the invalid vigorously.

"Then why won't Purt tell where he was?" demanded Lance doubtfully.

"I don't care where he was," said Billy. "If he says he didn't hit the man, he didn't. That's all. And we've got to prove it, boys."

"Some job you suggest," said Chet slowly. "It looks to me as though Pretty Sweet was in a bad hole, and no mistake."

Even the most charitable of his schoolmates took this view of Purt Sweet's trouble. His denial of guilt did not establish the fact of his innocence.

His inability, or refusal, to explain where he was at the time of the accident on Market Street in front of Mr. Belding's jewelry store made the situation very difficult indeed.

"If he could only put forward an alibi," Lance Darby said, when the Hill crowd of Central High boys and girls discussed the matter.