“Tom said yes he did, and if she’d excuse him he’d show her. It was what he called ‘slumgudgeon day.’ ‘Slumgudgeon’ is a kind of stew made up of the leavings of lots of other meals and the poor, darling cadets just hate it. He said ‘cold victuals’ never came in as handy as ours did then. So he unbuttoned his jacket, that fitted him as if he’d been melted into it, and began to pad himself out with the leavings. Cake and chickens, pickles and sardines, boiled eggs and fruit—you never saw such a mess! And the way he packed it in, so as to keep an even sort of front, was a caution. You know the poor dears have no pockets in their uniforms. Not allowed. So that was the only way he could take it. He wanted to share it with his cronies after we’d gone and told Aunty Lu that it would have been a perfectly wicked shame to have thrown it away, when it would do him so much good. Oh! we had a glorious time. I do just love West Point—”
“The cadets, you mean! I never saw a girl that liked the boys so well as you do, Molly Breckenridge. But I s’pose you can’t help it. If ’t wasn’t for that you’d be just splendid, and they don’t seem to mind—much—anyway,” remarked Alfaretta, beaming upon pretty Molly with loving smiles. Molly’s liking for “boys” seemed to honest, sensible Alfy the one flaw in an otherwise lovely character.
But Molly tossed her sunny head and laughed. Also, she flashed a mischievous glance into all the boyish faces turned toward her and on every one she saw a similar liking and admiration of herself. She was quite satisfied, was Jolly Molly.
“Now, if we are to ‘inspect’ the ‘Barracks,’ isn’t it time? So that we can get back to the house by the time James Barlow is ready to see us. I suppose the doctor won’t keep him in bed all day; do you, Mrs. Ford?” said Helena Montaigne.
She had already learned that the Gray Lady was bitterly opposed to Leslie’s plans for the future and wanted to put aside the unfortunate subject of West Point. To her surprise, instead of lightening, the lady’s face grew still more troubled, as she turned to scan the landscape behind her with a piercing gaze.
“That story was just rippin’! When I get to the Point the first place I shall go to see will be that church! Hear me, Dorothy Doodles?” demanded Leslie, catching her hand and swinging it lightly as he led her forward into the first room Lemuel had opened. “Will you come over there and bring me just another such a luncheon, girlie?”
“Well, yes. I don’t like to promise things but I guess this is safe enough. When you get there—when you get there—I’ll come, and you shall have the finest dinner Alfy and I can cook. We’ll do it all by ourselves—when you get there to eat it!”
“Oh! I’ll be there, never fear. My! isn’t this rippin’? How does the old soldier make the men keep such order, I wonder! Lem Hunt must be as great a martinet as he is talker. Look at him.”
The ranchman was in his element. He had long before marshalled the entire working force of San Leon into a “regiment.” Any newcomer who declined to join it was promptly “left out in the cold.” The “soldiers” were jolly company for themselves and none at all for any outsider who refused to obey the unwritten laws which honest old Lem had laid down for their benefit. “Captain Lem” was the neatest man of all, but he required the rest to come as near his standard as the disadvantages of previous bad training permitted.