"Threw you in!"

"Yes, sir. _Plop_!" said Mr. Butt, with a certain sad relish.

"Really, really!" said the headmaster. "Indeed! This is--dear me! I
shall certainly--They threw you in!--Yes, I shall--certainly----"

Encouraged by this appreciative reception of his story, Mr. Butt
started it again, right from the beginning.

"I was on my beat, sir, and I thought I heard a disturbance. I says to
myself, ''Allo,' I says, 'a frakkus. Lots of them all gathered
together, and fighting.' I says, beginning to suspect something,
'Wot's this all about, I wonder?' I says. 'Blow me if I don't think
it's a frakkus.' And," concluded Mr. Butt, with the air of one
confiding a secret, "and it _was_ a frakkus!"

"And these boys actually threw you into the pond?"

"_Plop_, sir! Mrs. Butt is drying my uniform at home at this very
moment as we sit talking here, sir. She says to me, 'Why, whatever
_'ave_ you been a-doing? You're all wet.' And," he added, again
with the confidential air, "I _was_ wet, too. Wringin' wet."

The headmaster's frown deepened.

"And you are certain that your assailants were boys from the school?"

"Sure as I am that I'm sitting here, sir. They all 'ad their caps on
their heads, sir."