"You are, and I will have you to understand--"

"I am not, and if you call me bad names again I'll--I'll--knock you
down!" And Tom doubled up his fists as he spoke.

"Rover, be quiet!" exclaimed Doctor Wallington, so sternly that both
Tom and Professor Sharp subsided. "I'll have no scene in this office.
You must behave yourself like a gentleman while you are here.
Professor, you must not call a student hard names."

"But this outrage, sir!" spluttered the instructor.

"We'll soon know the truth of the matter."

"I'd like to know what you are talking about," said Tom. "I haven't
committed any outrage, so far as I know."

"Didn't you do this?" cried Abner Sharp, and thrust under Tom's nose
a photograph of large size. The picture had once represented a fairly
good-looking female of perhaps thirty years of age, but now the hair
was colored a fiery red, and the end of the nose was of the same hue
while in one corner of the dainty mouth was represented a big cigar,
with the smoke curling upward. Under the photograph was scrawled in
blue crayon, "Ain't she my darling?'"

The representation struck Tom as so comical that he was compelled to
laugh outright; he simply couldn't help it. It was just such a joke
as he might have played years before, perhaps on old Josiah Crabtree,
when at Putnam Hall.