“Why did you throw the brickbats on your own hook?” asked Lawyer Ripley sharply.

“Why, you see, ’squire, ’twas just like this,” returned Tip.  “After I’d done it, if I had hurt Prescott, then I was goin’ to go to your son an’ scare ‘im good an’ proper by threatenin’ to blab that he had hired me to use them brickbats.  That’d been good fer all his spendin’ money, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, and for all he could steal, too,” replied Lawyer Ripley.

“I didn’t know nothing about his stealin’ money,” retorted Tip, half virtuously.  “I jest thought he had too much pocket money fer his own good, an’ so I’d help him spend some of it.  But, see here, lawyer, ye promised me that, if I did talk, nothin’ I told yer should be used against myself.”

“I am prepared to keep that promise,” replied Mr. Ripley coldly.

The sound of a slight stir came from the doorway between the outer and inner office.  There in the doorway, his face ghastly white, his whole body seeming devoid of strength, leaned Fred Ripley.

“I had almost forgotten that I asked you to come here,” said Mr. Ripley, as he looked up.  “How long have you been here?”

“Not very long, perhaps, but long enough to know that Dick Prescott and the rest have been doing all they can to make matters harder for me,” Fred answered in a dispirited voice.

“As it happens, they have been doing nothing of the sort,” replied the lawyer crisply.  “Come in here, Fred. I have had the whole story of your doings, but it was on a pledge that I would give you another chance to show whether there’s any good in you.  Fred, I can understand, now that you’ve always thought yourself better than most boys—–­above them.  The truth is that you’ve a long way to go to get up to the level of ordinary, decent, good American boyhood.  You may get there yet; I hope so.  But come, sir, are you going to make a decent apology to Prescott and his friends for the contemptible things you’ve tried to do to them?”

Somehow, Fred Ripley managed to mumble his way through an apology, though he kept his eyes on the floor all the while.  Full of sympathy for the father who, if proud, was at least upright, Dick and his chums accepted that apology, offered their hands, then tip-toed out, leaving father and son together.

CHAPTER XXII

ALL ROADS LEAD TO THE SWIMMING POOL

In the next few weeks, if Fred Ripley didn’t improve greatly in popularity, he was at all events vastly quieter and more reserved in his manner.

Tip Scammon had vanished, so far as common knowledge went.  Mr. Ripley, feeling somewhat responsible for that scamp’s wrong doing, in that Fred had put him up to his first serious wrong doing, had given Scammon some money and a start in another part of the country.  That disappearance saved Scammon from a stern reckoning with Prescott’s partners, who had not forgotten him.