CHAPTER XII

UNDER A FEARFUL CHARGE

Cadet Corporal Dodge took his new appointment as a triumph in revenge.  Of late he had been growing even less popular.  He determined to be a martinet with the men in ranks under him.  He made the mistake that all petty, senseless tyrants do.  The great disciplinarian is never needlessly a tyrant.

* * * * * * * *

The summer in camp passed quickly after July had gone.

In all, Miss Griffin made four visits to West Point that summer.  Greg became her favored and eager escort, to the disappointment of fifty men who would have been glad to take his place.

Both Cadet Holmes and Mr. Griffin’s very pretty sister kept up their attitudes of laughing challenge to each other throughout the summer.  It was impossible to see that either had scored a deep impression on the other.

Not even to his chum did Greg confide whether Miss Griffin had caught his heart.  Mr. Griffin, her brother, could hardly venture a guess to himself as to whether his sister cared for the tall and manly looking Holmes.

But when Miss Griffin had reached the end of her last summer visit to West Point she told Greg that she would not be there again for some time to come.

“At least,” asked Greg, “you’ll be here again when the winter hops start?”

“I cannot say,” was all the reply Miss Adele Griffin would make.

“In three weeks she goes back to the seminary in Virginia,” said Griff, when Greg spoke to him about the matter.  “Dell won’t see West Point before next summer.  Our people are not rich enough to keep Dell traveling all the time.”

Whether Greg was crestfallen at the news no one knew.  Greg had never believed, anyway, in wearing his heart on his sleeve—–­“just for other folks to stick pins in it, you know,” was his explanation.

There came the day when the furloughed second class marched over to camp.  Very quickly after that all classes were back in cadet barracks, and the charming summer of Mars had given place to the hard fall, winter and spring of the academic grind.

The return to studies found both Greg and Dick forced to do some extra hard work.  Mathematics for this year went “miles ahead” of anything that the former Gridley boys had encountered in High School.  Had they been able to pursue this branch of study in the more leisurely and lenient way of the colleges, both young men might have stood well.

As it was, after the first fortnight Greg went to the “goats,” or the lowest section in mathematics, while Dick, not extremely better off, hung only in the section above the goat line.

As the fall hops came on Greg went to about three out of every four.

“A fellow can bone until his brain is nothing but a mess of bone dust,” he complained.  “Dick, old chum, you’d better go to hops, too.”