The editor looked so hurt that Prescott made haste to add, earnestly: 

“Please don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Pollock.  But you simply cannot imagine the trouble that a fine write-up in a home paper may make for a cadet.  If I were a plebe, now, the upper classman would get hold of the write-up, somehow, and they’d make me read it aloud, at least a hundred times, while upper classmen stood about and congratulated me on being such a fine fellow as the paper described.  As Greg and I are now second classman, we couldn’t be hazed in quite that way.  But the other fellows would find some other way of using that home-paper write-up as a club for pounding us every now and then.  Mr. Pollock, believe me, cadet is mighty lucky whose home paper doesn’t say anything about him.”

“What is the matter?” asked the editor gravely.  “Are the other cadets jealous?”

“No; it isn’t that,” Prescott answered.  “That sort of thing is done, at West Point, to keep from getting the ‘big head.’  Probably your memory goes back easily to the Spanish War days.  You will remember that Mr. Hobson, of the Navy, sank the Merrimac in the harbor at Santiago, so that the Spanish ships, when they got out, had to come out in single file.  Mr. Hobson has a younger brother then at the Military Academy.  Well, the story still runs at West Point that Military Cadet Hobson was forced to read aloud all the best things about his brother in the Navy that the other cadets could find in the newspapers.  Besides that, Cadet Hobson, so we are told today, had to ‘sail’ chips on a tub of water, at the same time bombarding the chips with pebbles and cheering for his brother.  At West Point it doesn’t pay a cadet to be famous, even in the light of reflected glory.  Now, that is why I beg you, not to give Greg and myself the write-up that you propose.”

“All right, then,” sighed the editor.

“On the other hand, Mr. Pollock, I’ll tell you all manner of lively and printable facts about West Point, if you won’t mention Greg or myself or even mention the fact that Gridley has any cadets at the Military Academy.”

“That will have to answer,” nodded Mr. Pollock.  “But we wanted to do something big for you, Dick.”

“And you’ll be doing something very big for us, if you don’t mention us at all,” smiled Prescott.

So the “Blade” had a good deal of interesting reading about West Point the next morning.  Many Gridleyites were not satisfied because neither Prescott nor Holmes was mentioned in connection with the Military Academy.

The second time that Mr. Pollock met his former reporter was on the street.

“I’ve been kicking myself, Dick, because I forgot something the other day,” declared the editor.  “I have one of the nicest, gentlest little trotting mares in this part of the state, and a very comfortable light buggy with top and side curtains.  I hardly ever use the rig in hot weather.  Now, won’t you often have use for a horse and buggy while you’re at home?  If so, just ring up Getchel’s Livery at any time, day or night, and tell ’em to hitch up against your coming.  Will you?”