And, as usual, Pops quietly grinned without making any reply, and, election over, Benny soon fell back into his old ways.
We must jump now to June. All through May Benny had been "bracing up for corporal-ship," for he could not but note how utterly his claims were ignored by his own class-mates, while Pops kept on in the same steadfast line of duty, always prompt and alert, but silent; so reticent, in fact, and so halting at times in recitations, that he was looked upon by his instructors as slow. Delightedly the whole corps doffed the sombre gray and donned the white trousers on the 1st of June. Review and reception of the Board of Visitors went off in the usual finished style. The examinations of the graduating and furlough classes were rushed swiftly yet searchingly to their close, the Fourth Class sections being taken up rapidly, and disposed of in the same cold-blooded, business-like style, and then, one glorious June morning, the whole corps marched as escort to the graduates to the front of the library, where the diplomas were presented with much ceremony and congratulation. Then back to the front of barracks they tramped and re-formed line, and Glenn's voice rang out the last order he was destined to read as adjutant of the corps of cadets. All appointments hitherto existing in the battalion were annulled, and the following announced in their stead: To be captains, cadets so and so (Pops's first sergeant among them). To be adjutant, Cadet Blank. Then a list of lieutenants, another of sergeants, and then, to the thrilling interest of Geordie and his class-mates, now become full-fledged yearlings, the list of corporals. Cadets Benton, Wright, Ames, and Connell, the first four; Harry Winn, eighth, Graham somewhere below the middle; Benny Frazier nowhere. The January head of the class was unplaced on the soldier list, and three days later was officially announced to have fallen from first to fourth in general standing.
CHAPTER XIII
Yearling camp at last! The battalion was reorganized in order to equalize the four companies. The graduates and furlough-men—the latter their tormentors of the previous year—were gone, and Pops wrote to his father and McCrea that the hardest thing he had had yet to do was to say farewell to Glenn and Rand and his own captain, Leonard—the three First Class officers whom he and the plebes generally so greatly admired. Otis, too, was another with whom he found it hard to part. He didn't know how good a friend he had in him until after he was gone. Then an odd thing happened.
The furlough-men's turn came next, and hilariously they were rushing about the area, shaking hands right and left with the objects of their annoying attentions of the year before. Benny Frazier was loudly and conspicuously fraternizing with every older cadet, including a number whom he was wont to declare nothing on earth would ever induce him to speak to. Pops and Connell, shyly conscious of the glisten and glory of their new chevrons, were standing a little apart at the steps of the third division, waiting for the dinner-drum to beat, when Connell, for the first time, as senior non-commissioned officer present for duty, was to form the company, Pops assisting as a file-closer. The two fast friends had been designated as acting first and third sergeants respectively. Suddenly Woods, with two of his class-mates, in their "spick-and-span" civilian garb, came bustling by. The others stopped short to congratulate the pair on their chevrons and to add a friendly word or two, and then, to Geordie's surprise, Woods looked him straight in the eye: "Graham, I want to say before I go that I am heartily sorry for my part in our quarrel of last summer, and that you behaved perfectly right. Won't you shake hands?" And in an instant there was cordial hand-clasp, and with a dozen yearlings and furlough-men intermingled about them, there was a general "shake" all round, and patting of one another on the back, and Woods went off happier for the consciousness that at last he had done the manly and chivalrous thing he should have done long before. Otis and Leonard had told him as much, and down in the bottom of his heart he knew they were right. Only it's so hard a thing to do. Not that a gentleman, boy or man, will shrink from begging the forgiveness of one whom he has injured, but because there are always so many, boys and men both, who are not gentlemen, to sneer at what they term the "back-down."
"'WON'T YOU SHAKE HANDS?'"