"What scoundrel is taking my name in vein?" demanded Holmes, coming upon the trio.
Then there were hearty greetings, all over again. But in the end Reade looked Greg over from head to foot.
"Do they make you sleep on a stretcher at West Point?" Tom wanted to know. "Or what do they do, to pull a pair of galoots out to the length that you two have attained."
"It's the physical training and the military drills," explained Prescott, laughing. "But my! You fellows look like the Indian's head on a copper cent!"
Tom and Harry were, indeed, highly bronzed by the hot southwestern sun. Harry, in fact, was well on the way to being black, so burned had he become by his last few months of work.
"I hope, if you fellows are ever allowed to go forth into the Army, you'll get your first station down in Arizona," teased Tom.
"I don't," retorted Greg, "if it will make us look like you two."
"Oh, it won't," broke in Harry mockingly. "You see, we have to work down in Arizona. But you fellows wouldn't. We've seen some thing of the soldiery down in that part of the world, and they're the laziest crowd you ever saw. Why, the Army officers in Arizona sleep all day and grumble about the heat all night. They have tame Apaches to do their work for them. Oh, no, you wouldn't suffer down in Arizona!"
"But how do you fellows come to be home at this time?" asked Dick.
"Homesick!" sighed Tom. "The fellows in our engineer corps are entitled to some leave. So Harry and I waited until we had enough leave piled up, and then we started back for Gridley."