It was a night of unusually light attendance on the part of the fair sex, with a rather larger attendance than usual of midshipmen, for which reason Dave found many other midshipmen outside, strolling up and down.
"What we need, fellows," called Joyce, coming up to the chums, "is a new regulation that no midshipman may attend a hop unless he drags a femme."
"That would have shut you out of every hop so far this year," laughed Dave.
"I know it," Joyce admitted. "But I'm going to cut all hops after this, unless some real queen will favor me as her escort and agree to dance at least half the numbers with me. I've had only two dances this evening. It's too tame. I'm going back to Bancroft Hall and stand ready to turn in at the first signal. What's the use of hanging around at a hop when there's only one girl to every five fellows?"
"You have suffered the just fate of the free lance," remarked Dan Dalzell virtuously. "As for me, I never think of attending a hop unless I squire some femme thither."
"There used to be girls enough last year," complained Joyce. "Well, I'm off for home and bed."
"We'll stroll along up with you," proposed Darrin.
"No girls for you, either?"
"Not for two numbers. Then we return to the young ladies that we escorted here."
"Just to think," grunted Joyce, sniffing in the salt air that reached them from the waterfront, "a good deal more than a year more here before we get regularly at sea."