_Sir_: I have the honour to submit the following,--my technical
name for the summer encampment, U. S. M. A. To wit:
I am Lorenzo Monkey; and the name is not fame. It is tame: it
is lame: it is shame: it is blame: it is game. Yet I claim, a
Colonial dame was my flame, when I came. Same at same.
Very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
Charlemagne Kindred,
Cadet Private, Co. "A." Fourth Class.
To Cadet Lieut. Crabapple,
Commanding Battalion of Crabs.
Magnus chafed at all this stuff; growled over it, almost resisted; and
yet it was wise to pass things by as quietly as he could. All the same,
his feeling towards some of the upper classmen was getting to be a very
fixed fact, indeed.
Mr. Prank, for instance, was much given to hops,--also to prinking
for the same: and it was in his heart to combine all the good things
he could, and "crawling" plebs came in among the rest. So on hop
nights, after supper, when Mr. Prank was shaving, dressing, and vainly
endeavouring to curl his short hair, Magnus Kindred was frequently
detailed as valet. The work being to follow Mr. Prank about the tent
and fan him during these fatigues, and also to soothe and attune his
feelings by singing "Annie Laurie" or some other lovelorn ditty. How
Magnus did hate it!--and how he did secretly vow vengeance, if ever he
himself should have half a chance with Mr. Prank's best girl! But then!
Mr. Prank had a relay of "best girls," and could spare one or two just
as well as not.
On the other hand, the two men who "tented" with Magnus thought he had
an easy time.
"If you had to black Mr. Mean's shoes!" said Randolph.
"Or clear up after old Seaton," said Rig.
Rig's technical name taxed all his powers of memory and patience. It
began:
"I am the distilled quintessence of stuff, the double-dyed result of
being dipped in the Styx,"--and so on, _ad infinitum_, and to Rig,
certainly, _ad nauseam_.
Homesickness had broken loose in the fourth class, of late, and become
epidemic. These boys were but boys, and the manliest of them all
would--many a day--have given up his hopes of being a brigadier just
to lay his head down on his mother's apron, and have her pet him and
comfort him, and make him feel that he was not a "beast."
"But she'd not find any hair to stroke, now," said Magnus Kindred, in
one of these spasms. And then he caught hold of himself again, set his
teeth in his favourite fashion, and announced to himself that he meant
to be adjutant.
"And I'll not look like you, either," he went on, apostrophising Mr.
Larkin, who just then came strolling by between two admiring girls,
turning from one to the other with much the air of the exquisite who
said:
"Really, now, you know--won't somebody come and share me?"
The young adjutant's buttons were very bright, and his waist was very
small; and the red and white (brown) of his complexion left nothing
to be desired. If he had been a girl, you might have called his walk
"willowy," but I know not the masculine of that. And the barber had
plainly been open to persuasion in his case, and had left almost a
lovelock or two on the tall head.
Magnus Kindred watched the party go by, but they did not see him. In
one of the rocky, shady nooks on Flirtation, where the green leaves
rustle and the river whispers softly to the shore, there he had hidden
himself away with his sweet and bitter fancies. Hard, literal facts
they were just then, for Magnus.
The footsteps died away, and more came, quicker and brisker than the
first; and two cadets went by his hiding place. Then another with his
best girl (for the time being); and Magnus watched them all. As the
silence fell again a wood thrush in the shadows behind him rang its
liquid chime.
Then a tall cadet with chevrons, and the dainty air and manner which
had earned him the soubriquet of "Gentleman Joe," passed slowly by with
his mother on his arm; he bending down to her, and she looking up to
him, while a little white fidget of ten years old flitted about the two.
But when these were out of sight, then Magnus Kindred threw himself
face down among the moss and ferns, and gave no further heed to outside
things.
"Oh, mother!--and Cherry, and Violet, and Rose--and home!" It was very
bitter for a while. And when at last, in answer to a distant drum-call,
Magnus roused himself, and got on his feet, he knew that he hated that
drum, and all it betokened, just as hard as he could.
Gentler thoughts came, as he mounted the hill. The clear notes of
the thrushes were all around him, but in their grave sweetness there
were no faltering tones; and while it pierced the boy's heart it
strengthened it, too. Yes, one day _he_ would be the tall man with
chevrons, leading his mother along Flirtation; and she should be as
proud of him as Mrs. Gresham was of her son. And, instead of that child
in white, there would be--but here the drum became imperative, and
Magnus stowed away all the rest of his thoughts, and double-timed every
remaining step up to Camp Hard.
X