"As to your not wanting to go into the service," Dave continued, "if you should fail, tomorrow, in your physical examination, you would be as blue as indigo, and have the blue-light signal up all the way back home."
"I don't know but that is so. Yes; I guess it is," Dalzell assented.
"Now, there are at least ninety-nine chances in a hundred that you're going to pass the Navy doctors all right, Dan," his chum went on. "If you do, you'll be sworn into the Naval service as a midshipman. Then you'll have to keep in mind that you're not an admiral, but only a midshipman—on probation, at that, as our instructions from the Navy Department inform us. Now, as a new midshipman, you're only the smallest, greenest little boy in the whole service. Just remember that, and drop all your jolly, all your freshness and all your patronizing ways. Just listen and learn, Dan, and study, all the time, how to avoid being fresh. If you don't do this, I'm mighty confident that you're up against a hard and tough time, and that you'll have most of the other midshipmen down on you from the start."
"Any more 'roast' for me?" asked Dalzell plaintively.
"No; for, if you need any more, you'll get it from other midshipmen, who don't know you as well as I do, and who won't make any allowances for your greenness and freshness."
"My!" murmured Dan enthusiastically. "Won't I quiver with glee the first time I see you being called for twelve-inch freshness!"
Yet, despite their wordy encounters, the two remained, as always, the best and most loyal of friends.
For an hour and a half the two youngsters roamed about Annapolis, taking many interested looks at quaint old buildings that had stood since long before the Revolutionary War.
At last they turned back to the hotel, for, as Dalzell suggested, they needed a long night's sleep as a good preparation for going before the Naval surgeons on the next day.
Five minutes after they had turned out the gas Dave Darrin was soundly, blissfully asleep.