"Do you know," went on Noll, "this day's doings all seem like parts of a dream to me. I can't realize, yet, that I'm a soldier. I suppose it's because we haven't our uniforms yet."
"That has something to do with it, of course," nodded Hal. "I thought this a pretty good suit of clothes when I left home, but now I feel actually shabby and fearfully awkward when I look about me at older recruits in their snappy uniform. It'll really seem like a big load off my mind, Noll, when I find myself in the blue."
"The fellows tell me that a rookie generally has his first issue of uniform in about three days," said Noll. "That won't be so very long to wait."
"Won't it, though?" almost grumbled Hal. "Any time at all is too long to wait, when we've been dreaming so long about wearing the uniform."
"Why, we'd be a discredit to the uniform at present," smiled Noll. "Think how awkward we looked and felt, and were to-day. It seemed as though it were going to be simply impossible to learn the first steps of a soldier's business."
"We'll learn faster, now," suggested Hal; "now that Shrimp has gone out of our lives."
"Has he gone out of our lives, I wonder?" mused Noll.
"Say," hinted Hal, "I'd have given a lot to have seen Tip Branders drilling under Shrimp."
"I don't suppose we'll be very likely to see Tip again, for some years," suggested Noll.
In this he was in error, as will presently appear.