"Then that one white stripe would show that the corporal, before entering the cavalry, had served one complete enlistment in the infantry."
"Oh, this is simply incomprehensible!" cried the new pastor's wife in comical dismay. "I am certain that I could never learn to know all these things."
"It is a little confusing at first," smiled Dick's mother with another show of pride. "But I think I am beginning to understand quite a lot of it."
Mrs. Davidson went out of the bookstore conducted by Dick's parents in the little city of Gridley. Dick sighed a bit wearily.
"Why don't Americans take a little more pains to understand things American?" he asked his mother, with a comical smile. "People who would be ashamed not to know something about St. Peter's, at Rome, or the London Tower, are not quite sure what the purpose of the United States Military Academy is."
Yet, though some people annoyed him with their foolish questions, he was heartily glad to be back, for the summer, in the dear old home town. So was his chum, Greg Holmes, also a West Point cadet, and, like Prescott, a member of the new second class at the United States Military Academy. Both young men had now been in Gridley for forty-eight hours. They had met a host old-time friends, including nearly all of the High School students of former days.
Readers of "Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point" and of "Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point," are familiar with the careers of the two chums, Prescott and Holmes, at the United States Military Academy. The same readers are also familiar with the life at West Point of Bert Dodge, a former Gridley boy, but who had been appointed a cadet from another part of the state. Our old readers are aware of the fact that Dodge had been forced out of the Military Academy for dishonorable conduct; that it was the cadets, not the authorities, who had compelled his departure, and that Dodge resigned and left before the close of his second year.
Readers of these volumes of the High School Boys' Series know all about Bert Dodge in the course of his career at Gridley High School. Dodge, back in the old days in Gridley, had been a persistent enemy of Dick & Co., as Prescott and his five chums had always been called in the High School. Of those five chums Greg, as is well known, was Dick's comrade at West Point. Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell were now midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Their adventures while learning to be United States Navel officers, are fully set forth in The Annapolis Series. Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton had chosen to go West, where they became civil engineers engaged in railway construction through the wild parts of the country, as fully set forth in the Young Engineers' Series.
Just after Mrs. Davidson left the bookstore there were no customers left, so Dick had a few moments in which to chat with his mother.
"What has become of the fellow Dodge?" asked the young West Pointer.