"What scandal?" asked Khripatch with a dry smile, pacing up and down his study. "You arouse my curiosity, though, to speak candidly, I hardly believe in the possibility of a scandal in our school." "Yes, but you don't know who you have recently admitted to the school," said Peredonov with such malevolence that Khripatch paused and looked attentively at him. "I know all the new students perfectly well," he said dryly. "Besides, it goes without saying that the new boys in the first form have never been excluded from another school, and the only one who has just entered the fifth form came to us with such recommendations that preclude all possibility of suspicion." "Yes, but he shouldn't have come to us but to some other kind of institution," said Peredonov morosely and as if reluctantly. "Please explain, Ardalyon Borisitch," said Khripatch. "I hope you don't mean to say that Pilnikov ought to have been sent to a Reformatory." "No, that creature should be sent to a pension where they don't learn ancient languages,"[1] said Peredonov maliciously, and his eyes gleamed with spite. Khripatch put his hands into the pockets of his short jacket and looked at Peredonov with unusual astonishment. "What pension?" he asked. "Do you know what institutions are designated in that way? And if you do know, how could you venture to make such an unseemly suggestion?" Khripatch flushed violently and his voice sounded drier and even more decisive. At another time these symptoms of the Head-Master's anger would have flustered Peredonov. But this time he was not flustered. "Of course, you think Pilnikov's a boy," he said screwing up his eyes in derision, "but he's not a boy at all, but a girl, and what sort of a girl!" Khripatch uttered a dry, abrupt laugh, but his laughter sounded affected, it was so loud and mechanical--he always laughed like that. "Ha! Ha! Ha!" he laughed mechanically, and when he had finished laughing he sat down in the chair and threw his head back as if he had dropped exhausted from laughing. "You astonish me, my good Ardalyon Borisitch! Ha! Ha! Ha! Be so kind as to tell me upon what you base your supposition, if the premises which have led you to this conclusion are not secret! Ha! Ha! Ha!" Peredonov recounted everything that he had heard from Varvara, and incidentally he dilated on the poor qualities of Kokovkina. Khripatch listened and now and then gave vent to his dry, mechanical laughter. "I'm afraid, my dear Ardalyon Borisitch, that your imagination has played pranks with you," he said, as he rose and caught Peredonov by the sleeve. "I, as well as many of my esteemed friends, have children, we're not in our swaddling clothes. Surely you don't think that we would have admitted a disguised girl as a boy?" "That's your opinion," said Peredonov. "But if anything should happen who's going to be responsible?" "Ha! Ha! Ha!" laughed Khripatch. "What consequences are you afraid of?" "It'll demoralise the school," said Peredonov.