Bock stood by the wheel with his long, curly tongue running in and
out over his teeth. I hesitated a moment, thinking just how to
phrase my attack, when the elderly gentleman called out:
"Where's the Professor?"
I was beginning to realize that Mifflin was indeed a public character.
"Heavens!" I said. "Do you know him, too?"
"Well, I should think so," he said. "Didn't he come to see me last
spring about an appropriation for school libraries, and wouldn't
leave till I'd promised to do what he wanted! He stayed the night
with us and we talked literature till four o'clock in the morning.
Where is he now? Have you taken over Parnassus?"
"Just at present," I said, "Mr. Mifflin is in the jail at Port Vigor."
The ladies gave little cries of astonishment, and the gentleman
himself (I had sized him up as a school commissioner or something
of that sort) seemed not less surprised.
"In jail!" he said. "What on earth for? Has he sandbagged somebody
for reading Nick Carter and Bertha M. Clay? That's about the only
crime he'd be likely to commit.
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