Not long after supper many of the cadets began to dress carefully.
"Going to the hop, old ramrod?" inquired Mr. Furlong, standing just outside his tent while he fitted a pair of white gloves over his hands.
"Not to-night," returned Dick indifferently.
"Why, do you know, you haven't shown your face at hop yet?" Furlong demanded. "Yet when we were under instruction in the plebe class, you turned out to be one of our best dancers."
"Oh, I'll be in at one of the hops, later on in the summer," responded
Prescott.
"One?" gasped Furlong. "Oh, you wild, giddy thing! You're going to do better, aren't you, Holmesy?" continued Furlong, as Dick's old chum came out, fitting on a pair of white gloves.
"I'm going over and put my head in danger of being punched, I suppose," grinned Greg. "I'm going to have the nerve to 'stag it' tonight."
The man who "stags it"—-that is, does not escort any young woman friend to the hop, must needs dance, if at all, with the girl some other cadet has "dragged." This sometimes causes bad feeling.
"I'm going to drag a 'spoony femme' tonight," declared Furlong, contentedly. "She's no 'L.P.,' at that."
"Dragging a femme" is to escort a young woman to the hop. If she be "spoony," that means that she is pretty. But an "L.P." is a poor dancer.