Laura Bentley looked up at him with something of a little start.

Perhaps she, too, had been thinking, but a girl may not speak all that pa.s.ses in her mind.

"Yes," she answered; "let us keep on."

d.i.c.k, as he walked beside her, was tortured with the feeling that Laura Bentley might not wait long before making her choice of men in the world. Some other fellow, more enterprising than he, might-----

"But it wouldn't be fair!" muttered Prescott to himself. "I have no right to ask her to tie herself for years, and then perhaps fail myself."

Laura thought her cadet companion appeared a bit absent minded during the rest of the walk. Who shall know what pa.s.ses in a girl's innermost mind? Perhaps she divined what was moving in his mind.

As they pa.s.sed by the coast battery, then came up by Battle Monument, and so to the hotel, they found Greg and Anstey leaning against the veranda railing, chatting with Belle and Miss Griffin. These latest arrivals joined the others. Mrs. Bentley at last came down and joined them.

Thrice, in duty bound, d.i.c.k glanced at his watch. The third time a sigh full of bitterness escaped him.

"This is the meanest minute in my life," he declared. "It is time to say good-bye, for we must get back to camp and into full-dress uniform for parade."

"But shall we not see you after parade? asked Laura, looking up quickly, an odd look flitting over her face.

"No; we are soldiers, and move by schedule," signed d.i.c.k. "After parade there will be other duties, then supper. And you are going at the end of parade!"

Bravely Prescott faced the farewells, though he knew more of the wrench than even Laura could have guessed.

"But you will come again in winter?" he murmured in a low voice to Laura.

"If mother permits," she answered, looking down at her boot tip, then up again, smiling, into his face.

"Mrs Bentley, you'll bring the girls here again, this winter, won't you?" appealed d.i.c.k.

"If Dr. Bentley and Belle's parents approve, I'll try to," answered the matron.

Then came the leave-takings, brief and open. With a final lifting of their caps d.i.c.k and the others turned and strode down the path.

Laura and Belle gazed after them until the young men had disappeared into the encampment.

But you may be sure the girls were over on the parade ground by the time that the good old gray battalion had turned out and marched over, forming in battalion front.

It was a beautiful sight. Mrs. Bentley wasn't martial, but as she looked on at that straight, inflexible wall of gray and steel, as the band played the colors up to the right of line, the good matron was thinking to herself:

"What a pity that the country hasn't a thousand such battalions of the flower of young American manhood! Then what fear could we know in time of war?"

The girls looked on almost breathlessly, starting at the boom of the sunset gun, then thrilling with a new realization of what their country meant when the band crashed out in the exultant strains of the "Star Spangled Banner" and the Stars and Stripes fluttered down at West Point, to rise on another day of the nation's life.

It was over, and the visitors took the stage to the railway station.

What a fearfully dull evening it seemed in camp! d.i.c.k had never known the time to hang so heavily. He would almost have welcomed guard duty.

Over in another tent near by a "soiree" was in full but very quiet blast, for that b.u.mptious plebe, Mr. Briggs, had been caught in more mischief, and was being "instructed" by his superiors in length of service.

Prescott, however, didn't even look in to see what was happening.

"Isn't West Point life glorious, Belle?" asked Laura eagerly as the West Sh.o.r.e train carried them toward New York.

"Fine!" replied Belle enthusiastically. "But still---wait until we have seen Annapolis."

At ten o'clock the next morning the young ladies and Mrs. Bentley were traveling in a Pullman car, on another stage of their journey.

"I wonder what our young cadets are doing?" Laura wondered aloud, as she leaned forward.

"Enjoying themselves, you may be sure," Mrs. Bentley replied promptly, with a smile.

"That summer encampment seems like one long, huge lark," put in Belle Meade. "It must be great for young men to be able to enjoy themselves so thoroughly."

"I wonder just what our young men are doing at this moment?" persisted Laura.

"Well, if they're not dressing for something," calculated Mrs.

Bentley, "you may be sure they're moving about looking as elegant as ever and making themselves highly agreeable in a social way."

Ye G.o.ds of war! At that very moment d.i.c.k, in field uniform, and dripping profusely under the hot sun, was carrying a long succession of planks, each nearly as long and heavy as he could manage, to other cadets who waited to nail them in place on a pontoon bridge out over an arm of the Hudson. Greg Holmes was one of four young men toiling at the rope by which they were endeavoring to drag a mountain howitzer into position up a steep slope near Crow's Nest, while Anstey, studying field fortification, was digging in a trench with all his might and main.

CHAPTER X

THE CURE FOR PLEBE ANIMAL SPIRITS

So the weeks slipped by.

Up at five in the morning, busy most of the time until six in the evening, the cadets of the first, third and fourth cla.s.ses found ample time to enjoy themselves between dark and taps, at 10.30, except when guard duty or something else interfered.

Much of the "idle" time through the day was spent in short naps, to make up for that short six hours and a half of regular night sleep.

Yet all the young men seemed to thrive in their life of hard work and outdoor air.

Hazing was proceeding merrily, so far as some of the yearlings were concerned. Perhaps half of the cla.s.s in all engaged in two or more real hazings through the summer. A few of the third cla.s.smen became almost inveterate hazers.

But d.i.c.k Prescott, true to the principles had stated at the beginning of the encampment, hazed a plebe only when he believed it to be actually necessary in order to keep properly down some b.u.mptious new man.

Dodge returned from hospital after a very short stay there. Word had spread through the camp. Though Dodge, who admitted frankly that his thrashing had been deserved, managed to keep a few friends, but was avoided by most of the yearlings. Since he had taken his medicine so frankly, he was not, however, "cut."

One afternoon, when d.i.c.k had been dozing on his mattress for about ten minutes, during a period of freedom from drill, the tent flap rustled, and Yearling Furlong looked in.

"What is it?" called d.i.c.k.

"Sorry if I've roused you, old ramrod," murmured the caller.

"That's all right, Milesy. Come in and rest yourself. You won't mind if I keep flat, will you?