Prescott laughed good humoredly.  Then, dropping his voice, he went on very gravely: 

“Durry, you’ve behaved very nicely to me in more ways than one, after that time when I necessarily reported you.  Are you sure that you wholly overlooked my act.”

“Glad you asked me, Prescott.  I’ve come to realize that you did your full duty, and the only thing you could do as the captain of my company.  But I was terribly upset that night.  Nothing but a matter of the first importance would ever have driven me to slip into ‘cits.’ and sneak off the post in that fashion.”

“I can quite believe that,” nodded Dick.

“Well, it—–­it was a girl, of course,” confessed “Durry.”

“You know, cadets have a habit of being interested in girls, and this girl means everything to me.  She’s up in Newburgh, and was ill.  I thought she was more ill than she really was.  But I knew that I could hardly get official permission to go and see her, so—–­so I chanced it and went without leave.  I wouldn’t have done such a thing under any other circumstances.”

“Did the young lady recover?” asked Prescott with deep interest.

“Oh, yes; I dragged her to the hop the other night.  She was stepping around the hall with another fellow, for one of the dances, and that was how I came to be out in the air alone.  But I’ll look for both you and Holmesy at practice this afternoon,” ended “Durry,” hastening away.

“Go to a diamond try-out?” asked Greg when Dick broached the subject.

“Of course I will, and crazy over the chance.  All that has held me back so far, old ramrod, was the fact that you hadn’t been invited.  But now that has all been changed.”

When the diamond squad reported, Lieutenant Lawrence, the head baseball coach, ordered the young men outdoors to the field.

“Come over here, please, Prescott and Holmes,” called the coach, who had been conferring in low tones with “Durry.”

“What positions do you two feel that you would be at your best in?”

“Why, we have conceit enough, sir, to think that we might make at least a half-way battery,” smiled Dick.

“Battery, eh?” repeated Lieutenant Lawrence.  “Good enough!  Get out and do it.  Durville, you’re one of the real batsmen.  Run out there to the home plate, and see whether Prescott and Holmes can put anything past you.”

How good it felt to be in field clothes again!  And both Greg and Dick wore on the breasts of their sweaters the Army “A,” won by making the football eleven the year before.

Dick fingered the ball carefully while Greg was trotting away to place behind the home plate.  Lieutenant Lawrence went more deliberately, but took his place where the umpire would have stood in a game.

“What kind of a ball do you like best, Durry?” asked Prescott, smilingly.

“A medium slow one, close to the end of the stick, about here,” replied Durville.