The thought was torment.  Nor, of course, did Dick fail to remember all about that prosperous and agreeable Gridley merchant, Leonard Cameron, who, for upwards of two years, had been one of Miss Bentley’s most devoted admirers.

“I suppose he’s the kind of fellow who is calculated to please a woman,” mused Dick with a sinking at heart.  “And Cameron has had the great advantage of being right on the spot all the time.  Moreover, he has had his future mapped out for him, while I wasn’t assured about my own, and he hasn’t been afraid to speak.  Great Scott, I must wait until the night of the graduation ball before I can speak and find out how the land lies for me.  But is Laura coming to that hop?”

Again Dick ran hastily through the letter.  Yet, look as he would, he could find no allusion of Laura’s to coming on for the Graduation Hop.

“What an idiot I am!” growled Prescott to himself.  “I’m certain I forgot to ask her, in my last letter.  If I did, it was solely because I’ve always been so sure that she’d be on here for graduation week as a matter of course.”

After pacing his room for a few moments, Dick sat down and wrote feverishly back to Laura Bentley, asking her if she were coming on for graduation and the hop.

“I’ve always looked forward to having you here as a matter of course on that great occasion,” Dick penned, “so I’m not very certain that I have made the invitation as explicit as I’ve meant to.  But you’ll come, won’t you, Laura?  It would be a poor graduation for me, without your face in the throng, for the others will be strangers to me.  Won’t you please write promptly and set my mind at ease on this vital point?”

In three days Laura’s answer came.  Unless unavoidably prevented she would be on hand during a part of graduation week.

“And I certainly want to attend the graduation hop,” Laura added, “for it will probably be the only one that I shall ever have a chance to attend.”

“Now, what does she mean by that last statement?” pondered Dick, finding new cause for worry.  “Does she mean that she expects to cut the Army after this year?  Is she really planning to marry that fellow Cameron?  Gracious, how time has flown during these hurried years at West Point!  For two years past Laura has been fully old enough to wed!  What a folly she’d commit in waiting all these years for backward me to get ready to open my lips!  Yes; I guess it’s going to be Cameron.”

Cadet Prescott compressed his lips grimly, but he was soldier enough to be game and face the music.

“I’ve got to be patient a few weeks more, and take the chances,” Dick told himself, as he scurried away to daily ball practice.  “With a rival in the field I wouldn’t dare, anyway, to trust my fate to a pleading set down on paper.  But I’ll send Laura a letter once a week now, anyway.  She may guess from that, as graduation approaches, that I am sending my thoughts more and more in her direction.”