"I'm not going to camp," said Geordie, slowly—"at least, not now. And, Frazier," continued he, laying down his bundle, "I've not yet said one word to anybody but yourself about this. I've told you twice that our ways were so different that we did not get along as we should as tent or room mates, so if you want to take anybody else, do so. It'll be some time before I come into camp, and then I shall slip into any vacancy that there may be. To be perfectly frank, I cannot afford the demerit it costs me to live with you, and—I don't like cigarette smoke."
"Any more than you do me, I suppose," drawled Frazier, interrupting. "Now that you've got your chevrons, and passed to the Third Class, you've no further use for the fellow that helped you to both."
Graham colored. It was so utterly false and unjust.
"I've no word to say against you, Frazier, and you know it. I am obliged to you for what help you gave me, but I don't think I owe either my chevrons or my gain in standing to you."
"Oh, you've had this thing all cut and dried for weeks," said Benny, sneering. "You're simply moving over into Connell's room as a preliminary to moving into camp with him, leaving me to find a tent-mate at the last moment."
"I am not going to Connell's. I am not going to camp. I told you so," said Geordie, gulping down his wrath, and speaking—as he had seen McCrea, when he was very angry—slowly and deliberately.
"Where, then? Where are you going to? Surely"—and here a sudden light dawned on Benny—"surely you've not been turned out over plebes. You are? You? Well, may I be blessed! Listen to this, fellows," he cried, rushing across the hall, raging within himself with envy, baffled hope and ambition, bitter jealousy and remorse, all intermingled—"listen to this: Corporal Pops turned out over plebes!"
"Well, why not?" answered the yearling addressed; while his room-mate coolly demanded:
"What is there that seems ridiculous to you in that, Frazier?" And he, too, went in to congratulate Graham, while Benny dashed miserably down-stairs in search of some one to sympathize with him, and some one to whom to tell the story of Graham's treachery.
"Upbraided Pops for going back on him about the tent, did he?" said Benton after tattoo that night. "Well, the moment it was known, five days ago, that I was to act as sergeant-major this summer, Frazier came to ask me to choose him for a tent-mate and battalion clerk. He can make out a prettier set of papers than any man in the class, but I'd rather do all the work myself, and any fellow can tell him so that likes to."