"The only pleasure I recognize in the matter, Laura, is yours.
So I am wholly at your command."
He tried to answer lightly and gallantly, yet felt, an instant later, that his words had had a strained sound.
The same thought had struck the girl.
Yet, instead of asking him to turn the horse's head about, Laura ventured:
"Gridley must be pleasant, as your home town, yet I fancy you are already looking forward to getting back to your ideals at West Point?"
"Is she tired of having me around?" wondered Cadet Prescott, wincing within, as though he had been stabbed.
"I'm keener for West Point, every day, Laura," he answered quietly. "Yet, even in the case of such a grand old place as the Military Academy, it is worth while to get away once in a while. If it were not for this long furlough, midway in the four years' course, many of us might go mad with the incessant grind."
"Oh, you poor Dick!" cried Laura Bentley, in quick, genuine sympathy.
"Yes; I think I can quite understand what you say."
And then a new light came into her eyes, as she added, very softly:
"We in Gridley, who hope for you with your own intensity of longings, must take every pains to make this furlough of yours restful enough and full enough of happiness to send you back to West Point with redoubled strength for the grind."