"I cannot say," was all the reply Miss Adele Griffin would make.
"In three weeks she goes back to the seminary in Virginia," said
Griff, when Greg spoke to him about the matter. "Dell won't see
West Point before next summer. Our people are not rich enough
to keep Dell traveling all the time."
Whether Greg was crestfallen at the news no one knew. Greg had never believed, anyway, in wearing his heart on his sleeve—-"just for other folks to stick pins in it, you know," was his explanation.
There came the day when the furloughed second class marched over to camp. Very quickly after that all classes were back in cadet barracks, and the charming summer of Mars had given place to the hard fall, winter and spring of the academic grind.
The return to studies found both Greg and Dick forced to do some extra hard work. Mathematics for this year went "miles ahead" of anything that the former Gridley boys had encountered in High School. Had they been able to pursue this branch of study in the more leisurely and lenient way of the colleges, both young men might have stood well.
As it was, after the first fortnight Greg went to the "goats," or the lowest section in mathematics, while Dick, not extremely better off, hung only in the section above the goat line.
As the fall hops came on Greg went to about three out of every four.
"A fellow can bone until his brain is nothing but a mess of bone dust," he complained. "Dick, old chum, you'd better go to hops, too."
Dick went to only one, in October. He stagged it, whereas Greg often dragged. But Prescott saw no girl there who looked enough like Laura Bentley to interest him. His standing in class interested him far more than hops at which a certain Gridley girl could not be present.
Laura had written him that she and Belle might be at a hop early in December.