"You spend four years and three months here, and see if you don't feel the same way about it," smiled Dick. "But I love every gray stone in these grand old buildings, just the same. West Point shall be ever dear in my memory!"
Greg's mother now came out and joined the ladies on the porch. A moment or two later Mr. Prescott and Mr. Holmes stepped out and grasped their sons' hands.
"We haven't a heap of time left if we want to catch the down-river steamboat," suggested Dick, with a glance at his watch.
So this happy little home party entered the bus, and the drive to the dock began.
They passed scores of cadets, who carefully saluted these grads.
Everyone in the party knew of the betrothal of Dick and Laura. Greg had had to stand a good deal of good-natured chaffing from his parents because he had not fared as well.
"The next girl I get engaged to," sighed Greg, "I'm going to insist on marrying instantly. Then there'll be no danger of losing her."
At the dock, Anstey, Durville, Douglass and other grads. waited, though the majority of the members of the late first class were already speeding to New York on a train that had started a few minutes earlier.
"I couldn't bear to go down by train, suh," explained Anstey in a very low voice. "I want to stand at the stern of the steamer, and see West Point's landmarks fade and vanish one by one. And I don't reckon, suh, that I shall want anyone to talk to me while I'm looking back from the stern of the boat."
"Same here," observed Greg, with what was, for him, a considerable display of feeling.