There the matter ended for the moment.  Dick joined in the general conversation.  Presently Cartwright tried to, but the officers to whom he addressed his remarks replied either so briefly or so coolly that the captain realized that he was not popular at the present time.

“Holmes will make trouble for any one who doesn’t toady to him,” thought Captain Cartwright moodily.  “I can see that I’ve got to make it my business to take the conceit and arrogance out of him.”

At almost the same moment, over in a company barracks, Sergeant Mock, as he chewed his food gloomily, was reflecting: 

“So Captain Holmes will call me down before a lot of officers, will he?  He’ll order me to show more ‘pep,’ will he, the slave-driver?  And if I don’t he’ll break me, eh?”

“Breaking” a non-commissioned officer is securing his reduction to the grade of private.

“The captain is so lazy himself that he doesn’t know a good man when he sees one,” Mock told himself angrily.

Then he added, threateningly to himself: 

“He’d better not try it.  If he does, he’ll sure wish he hadn’t.  Since this war began even the officers are only on probation, and I’ve brains enough to find a way to put him in bad with the regimental K.O.”

“What’s the matter, Mock, don’t you like your food?” asked the sergeant seated at his left.  “You’re scowling something fierce.”

“It isn’t the chow,” Sergeant Mock retorted gruffly.

“Must be the heat, then—–­or a call-down,” observed his brother sergeant.

“Never you mind!” retorted Mock.  “And I’m not talking much now; I want to think.”

“Must have been a real ‘cussing-out’ that you got,” grinned the other sergeant unconcernedly.

Bending over a passing soldier murmured to Mock: 

“Top wants to see you in the company office when you’re through eating.”

The first sergeant of a company is also known, in Army parlance, as the “top sergeant” or the “top cutter.”

Though he dawdled with his meal Mock did not eat much more.  Finally he rose, stalking sulkily from the mess-room and across the central corridor.  Thrusting out a hand he turned the knob of the door of the company office and almost flung the door open, stepping haughtily inside.

“Mock,” said First Sergeant Lund, looking up, “you’re too old in the service to enter in that fashion.  You know, as well as I do, that there is a ‘knock’ sign painted on the door, and that only an officer is privileged to enter without knocking.  Suppose the captain had been in here when you flung in in that fashion?”

“He’s no better than any one else!” retorted Mock.

Facing about in his chair Sergeant Lund briefly rested one hand on his desk, then sprang to his feet.

“Attention!” he commanded sharply.

Mock obeyed, throwing his head up, his chest out and squaring his shoulders as he dropped his hands straight along either trousers seam, though he sneered: