Terry shoveled the last forkful into his mouth. “Beg pardon?” he asked blandly.
“I’ll put you on report!” growled the sergeant.
“My dear fellow, you can’t,” smiled Terry. “I didn’t take them myself and so you have no charge to prefer. And if you did I’d pound all the beans out of you once I got you away from the mess tent!”
“That amounts to threatening an officer while on duty, Mr. Mackson!” charged the sergeant.
“That’s not a threat, that’s a promise,” grinned the redhead. The sergeant muttered savagely but subsided.
“Much obliged,” Terry whispered to Vench. “Some day I’ll help you out.”
“But not in the matter of beans,” smiled Vench. “They just don’t happen to be my weakness!”
One of the steady visitors to the camp was the little Carson boy. He was the son of the farmer from whom the camp supplies were purchased, and the cadets had taken a great liking to him. He was a friendly, likable boy and obviously deeply interested in the activities of the young soldiers. He watched all of their maneuvers with fascinated interest and the cadets welcomed him in their tents.
“That youngster has the makings of a good cadet in him,” Don said. “Too bad he isn’t one of us. How would you like to be a cadet, Jimmie?”
The boy flushed with pleasure and looked around the tent. “I’d like it more than anything else in the world,” he told them. “I’ll tell you a secret. Want to hear it?”