Good evening!" Mr.Cantwell got out of the room while some of the members were still scraping their chairs into place.
Dick Prescott had not openly looked in the principal's direction.
Yet the amateur reporter had taken it all in.

He was grinning inside now.

He had taken upon himself the work of reporting these meetings that he might be in a position to block any unfair move on the part of the principal.
"I wonder what Mr.Cantwell is thinking about, _now_ ?" Dick asked himself, with an inward grin as he picked up his pencil.
That Board meeting was about as dull and uneventful as the average.
Yet Dick managed to make a few live paragraphs out of it that Guilford, "The Blade's" news editor, accepted.
It still lacked some minutes of ten o'clock when young Prescott left the morning newspaper office and started briskly homeward.
"I didn't catch that Board-reporting idea a day too soon," the boy told himself, laughing.

"Mr.Cantwell was certainly on hand for mischief to-night.

But how quickly he made his get-away when he discovered that his culprit was present as a member of the press! I guess Mr.Gadsby must have passed him a strong hint.
But I must be careful not to have any malice in the matter.
Some evening when Mr.Cantwell does come before the Board with some report I must take pains to give him and his report a nice little notice and ask 'The Blade' folks to be sure to print it.
Then---gracious!" Utterly startled, Dick heard and saw an ugly brickbat whizz by his head.