XXV
FURLOUGH
Den away, away, for I can't wait any longer.
Hooray! Hooray! I's goin' home! —Old Shady.
It is strange how some event towards which you have been working, and which seemed to fill earth and sky till you reached it, at once then sinks down and becomes hardly distinguishable from the plain. So passed by the examination to Magnus Kindred.
In fact everybody is so fagged out by the 12th of June, tired with work, with gaiety and excitement, that feeling seems swallowed up of high pressure. This may be one reason why the bad success of other men affects so little those who have won through. Exceptionally strong as class feeling is at West Point, the dropped names seem to make very slight impression. And in some cases, of course, there is no surprise. When a man bones nothing but mischief, and tries to crowd into the three weeks before examination the study which should have filled six months, June is not always kind to him. Unless, indeed, he be one of those men who are pure mathematics—and even then the discipline column may cut him down. So it was with small surprise that Magnus heard Chapman's name among the "found deficient." Chapman did not whimper, but he took it hard.
"It's that beastly calculus!" he confided to Magnus, in the hurried moments of parting. "Oh, yes! I know what you mean by raising your eyebrows, but a man couldn't live here if he didn't run it now and then."
"But you see a man can't always live here if he does," said Magnus.
"Bosh! Yes, he can. Only they don't all run against old Towser every time, as I did. No, it wasn't that at all, it was the calculus."
And doubtless, in great measure, it was. Another boy, from far away, fairly came to tears.