Mr. Wayne laughed a little.
"Well, I'd be ready for them," he said. "Fighting for rights that you haven't got does not pay at West Point."
"Why, what sort of a queer place is it?" said young Charlemagne with growing distaste.
"It is a place where you are under orders," said Mr. Wayne, "and that often makes wild work with one's own private notions. You swear to obey orders when you go in, and you are under them till you come out. From the time you get up till the time you go to bed,—and after."
"Not while I am asleep, I suppose," said the boy with an expressive lift of the brows.
"Yes you are. If you fail to hear the reveille gun, your being asleep will not excuse you. It is your business to wake up. Nobody will come round and tap softly at your door and say, 'Now, Magnus, dear, if you are not too tired, I think you had better get up.'"
It was so exactly what his mother had said but four days ago that the boy's eyes flushed, and his throat choked up.
"What will they do to me?" he said, making a brave fight for his self-control, "if I do not hear the gun?"
"Oh, you will figure in the report as a 'late,' or an 'absent,' with corresponding small penalties, that is all. Nothing very terrible if it comes but once, but piling up trouble if it comes often."
"They might call a fellow," said Magnus, who never liked to do that kind office for himself.