“Tap! tap! tap-tap-tap!” went the drums, and off moved the young soldiers. They marched around the parade ground twice, and then into the mess-hall, where each cadet took his place at one or another of the long dining tables. It was a spirited scene, and one calculated to make the heart of each boy bound with enthusiasm.
“Your name is on that list, Jack,” whispered a cadet sitting near. “I saw Peleg Snuggers tacking it up in the gym as I came away.” Peleg Snuggers was the general utility man around Putnam Hall.
“I hope you are on it, too, Joe,” answered Jack.
“I am,” returned Joe Nelson, who was a quiet and studious cadet, hailing from Philadelphia. “And Andy Snow and Henry Lee are on it, too,” he went on. “I think——”
“Silence at the table!” broke in the rough voice of Josiah Crabtree. “If I hear any more of that, I’ll send you away without your supper!”
“Oh,” murmured Joe Nelson. It was rarely that he had any trouble with any of the teachers.
“Say, but old Crabtree is crusty enough to make pie of,” was Pepper’s whispered comment.
“Silence, I say!” thundered the first assistant. “I will have silence!” And he looked around the board so fiercely that hardly anybody dared to say another word.
At the next table sat Dan Baxter and Mumps, the sneak. The former scowled darkly at Jack and Andy, while the sneak put his tongue into his cheek at them.
“I’m going to fix Mumps,” whispered Pepper, who had been told of the occurrence in the school yard, and watching his chance, he leaned back in his chair and dropped a bit of sharp fish-bone down inside the sneak’s collar.