I was tired that day in school but I was trying to do the best I could when the teacher stopped at my desk and told me Mr. Ladd wanted to see me in his office.  A scared feeling passed through my body, so bad I was visibly shaken as she walked from my desk.  I had thought about "taking off" but as I came out of my school room there was another employee in the hallway waiting to escort me all of the way to Mr. Ladd's office.  As I had walked to Mr. Ladd's office, I had a pretty good idea what he wanted to see me about and what he was going to do to me when I got there.  As soon as I got to Mr. Ladd's office, his wife told me to sit in a chair in the waiting area outside of Mr. Ladd's office.  The only way out then for me was to go past her.
    Mrs. Ladd was sort of a short, stocky woman and wore her hair similar to Mrs. Beebee's, braided and coiled into a bun on the back of her head.  I think she acted as Mr. Ladd's secretary.  I also believe she was the Dean of Girls.
    Mr. Ladd's office was at the end of the hallway, as though it was once part of the hallway.  There was a glass partition between Mr. Ladd's office and the waiting area.
    From where I was sitting, I could easily see everything that was going on in Mr. Ladd's office.  He was talking to a girl.  It was Mary.  Even with her back to me I could see it was her, the girl all of the other boys and girls teased me about.
    Mr. Ladd was mad about something.  I couldn't hear what he was saying to Mary but he was yelling at her.  The more he yelled the madder he seemed to get.  Mary had stood there with her head down and her hands clasped behind her back.  Apparently he didn't feel he was getting his message across to her for he came around his desk with a paddle in his right hand, a paddle similar to one Mr. Urquhart used.  Mr. Ladd pushed Mary down so she laid over his desk then pulling up her dress past her waist, revealing her white underpants, he whipped her with the paddle.  He didn't hold anything back either just because she was a girl.
    It was a shock to me to see a girl get a whipping.  It had been the first time I even knew girls got whippings.  To me, girls were sugar and plumbs and everything nice and the boys were the bad ones and him whipping her didn't change my mind about that.  I felt he was very wrong in ever touching her.  When Mary came out of the office, I couldn't look at her.  I felt very sorry for her and I didn't want her to know I had seen him giving her a whipping, even though she had seen me get a whipping about a month before.
    My attention was quickly distracted from Mary for Mr. Ladd was at his office door, telling me to come into his office.  He still had the paddle in his hand and I knew I was in for some of the same that Mary had just received.
    Standing in front of his desk, I appropriately said, "Yes Sir" and "No Sir," to everything he said.  I made all of my replies as meekly as I could, fearing at any moment he would be forcing me down over his desk and pick up where he had left off with Mary.  To my surprise, the more he talked the calmer he got.  I think by the way I was acting he thought he was getting through to me.  When he called me the ringleader, I didn't deny it, for to do so would have been an invitation for him to use his paddle on me.  I guess he had bought my story when I had told him.  "Mr. Ladd, I will never run away again."  At the time, I meant every word I said but later I had second thoughts on the matter.
    I was probably in his office for only a few minutes but it had seemed like hours before he gave me permission to return to my class room.  Class was always let out at 11:30 every morning so we could return to our cottage and get ready for lunch.
    As I came in the front door of my cottage, Mrs. Beebee was sitting in her chair waiting for me.  This was the first time I had seen her since I had ran away.  She gave me the whipping I knew I would get, with all of my clothes off and bent over the chair.  When she was finished with me, she told me to get dressed then to go up to the dormitory, take all of my sheets off of my bed and bring them down.  With welts across my back, tears still in my eyes and not knowing what was in store for me, I did as she had told me and returned to the front room where she was still sitting.
    She then told me to go down to the basement and bring all of my clothes up.  So laying my sheet on the table in the front room, I went to the basement and got all of my clothes, still not knowing what was going on.  When I knew I was in trouble I never asked questions.  I had found the less I spoke the better off I would be.
    When returning to the front room, I noticed my Sunday clothes were laying on the table near the sheets.  Mrs. Beebee told me to put all of my things, except for my Sunday clothes, on top of the sheets and wrap them up in a bundle.  As I remember it, she had put it something like, "Put your clothes on top of the sheets and wrap them in a bundle for you are going to Turner Hall."
    Turner Hall!  Oh no!  A fear seemed to shoot through me, it seemed to penetrate every part of my body.  I didn't like Mrs. Beebee.  I would have done anything to get out of her cottage but going to Turner Hall wasn't on my list of "anything."
    Turner Hall was the cottage that Mr. and Mrs. Urquhart took care of.  What I didn't know firsthand about the Urquharts, other boys had filled me in on both of them and none of it was good.
    Doing as I was told to do, I bundled up all of my things together, then carrying them in front of me I started for Turner Hall, with no intentions of ever reaching there.  Only a couple of hours before I had told Mr. Ladd I wasn't going to run away again but now I had second thoughts about that.  Even though I had been very tired from lack of sleep, I was planning on throwing the things I was carrying on the ground and running away as soon as I was out of Mrs. Beebee's sight.
    Mrs. Beebee stood on the front porch of the cottage, watching me as I walked towards the girls' cottages.  I would have to pass between two of the of the girls' cottages to get to Turner Hall on the boys' side of the institution, on the far side of the campus, past the dining hall.
    As I passed between the girls' cottages, I glanced back towards my old cottage.  I could still see Mrs. Beebee standing on the porch watching me.  I wouldn't be out of her sight until I was in front of one of the girls' cottages.
    Just as soon as I was out of sight of Mrs. Beebee I seen Mrs. Urquhart standing on the front porch of Tuner Hall.  Seeing I couldn't run away, I had walked across the campus, in front of the dining hall, to Turner Hall and the Urquharts.  I accepted my transfer, there was nothing else I could do.  Well.... for the time being anyway.