"You do? How?"
"Mr. Darrin told me a lot that day he and I spent some hours hunting together. He told me a lot about your old schoolboy days."
"That's only another proof of how much Darrin likes you, then," pursued the young lieutenant warmly. "Darrin isn't usually very talkative with new acquaintances. But what I was going to say was that, back in our schooldays, I often made a great reputation for wisdom just because I accepted Darrin's wise estimates of human nature and people. So now Darrin's praises of you two young sergeants have made me feel that I have missed a lot of what I should have observed about you both."
"Both Terry and myself will feel highly honored over such good opinions of us, sir," Hal replied.
"I wouldn't talk quite so freely if I didn't know that you're both so level-headed that a little praise will make better, instead of worse soldiers of you, Sergeant Overton. Of course, as one of your officers, I understand that both of you young sergeants are working onward and forward with the hope of one day winning commissions in the line of the Army. I wish you every kind of good luck, Overton. Here's my hand on it. And some day I hope to be able to offer you my hand again—when, wearing the shoulder straps, you come into an officers' mess, somewhere, as a fellow-member of that mess."
"Mr. Darrin made both Terry and myself promise, sir, that if we ever win commissions, we'll visit him on his ship as soon after as possible."
"Mr. Darrin and Mr. Dalzell are on their way to China by this time," continued Lieutenant Prescott. "From the China station their next detail will undoubtedly be the Philippine station. And that's where, after a while, this regiment will be due to go."
And that is just where the Thirty-fourth Regiment did go, as will be discovered in the next volume in this series, which is published under the title: "Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines; Or, Following the Flag Against the Moros."
Not only did our two young sergeant friends taste all the joys of life and residence in these romantic tropical possessions of the United States, but they were destined also to see and take part in a lot of spirited fighting against brown enemies of the United States.
But these adventures must be reserved for the next volume.