Two very much disconcerted cadets, and very red in the face, stiffly resumed their caps and marched away.

“Great Scott, what did that mean?” gasped Jordan, struck all in a heap by his strange reception.

Cadet Douglass gasped.

“Jordan,” he exclaimed contritely, “I’m the greatest ass in the corps!”

“You must be!” exploded Dick’s enemy.  “But what was the cause of it all?”

“Why, Jordan, you---you see-----”

“Who is Miss Bentley?”

“Jordan, she’s Prescott’s girl!”

“What?” gasped the other cadet, staring at his classmate.

“Fact!”

“Prescott’s—–­girl?”

“Yes.”

“Jove, a puppy like Prescott has no business with a superb girl like that.”

“All the same, Jordan, the fact will prevent you from knowing her.”

“Now, I’m not so sure of that!” cried Jordan suddenly, with strange fire in his eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing,” mumbled Jordan, suddenly recovering himself.

Then, under his breath, he chuckled gleefully: 

“Miss Bentley is just struck on the uniform, of course.  A girl like that couldn’t care for a misfit like Prescott.  Well, he won’t be in the uniform much longer.  I won’t lose sight of Miss Bentley.  I’ll find her again when Prescott is out of the uniform for good!”

Now, aloud, he asked: 

“Doug, do you happen to remember Miss Bentley’s first name?”

“Larry,” answered Cadet Douglass absently.

“Stop that!” cried Jordan almost fiercely.

“Oh, a thousand pardons, Jordan.  I’m so rattled I don’t know what I’m doing or saying.  The girl’s first name is Laura.  Peach, isn’t she?”

“Laura!  That’s a sweet name,” murmured Jordan to himself.  His mind was now running riot, not only with plans to drive Dick Prescott out of the Army, but also to win the heart of Laura Bentley.

“Hold on, Jord,” begged Douglass, halting and leaning against a post in the veranda structure.  “Don’t take me to your sister just yet.  Let me get my breath, my nerves, my wits back again.”

“Take an hour,” advised Jordan laconically.  “You need it.  Didn’t you know Miss Bentley was Prescott’s girl?”

“Yes; but it had slipped my memory.  It’s mighty hard, when you come to think of it, to remember the girls of so many hundreds of fellows,” explained Cadet Douglass plaintively.

Ten minutes later Dick and Greg appeared, greeting the ladies.  Mrs. Bentley assented to their going around to the north side of the porch, whence they could look up the river to the lights of Newburgh.

“We very nearly had an adventure, Dick,” laughed Belle.

“Yes?”

“We very nearly shook hands with Mr. Jordan.  It was Laura’s quick cry that saved me, just in the nick of time, from touching hands with the fellow.”

Miss Meade then related their experience, and the discomfiture of Cadets Douglass and Jordan.