“I wondered,” said Isabel. “I could not remember, but Poddy Brown asked me if I would be there and said he hoped to see me!”
“What a name!” exclaimed Cathalina. “Poddy!”
“Yes, isn’t it? I asked him about it at the military reception, and he said it was a great compliment on the part of the boys—they call him ‘Pod’ because he never ‘spills the beans’!”
Having brothers, neither Cathalina nor Betty had to have that expression explained. “I see,” said Cathalina. “He’s the boy with that serious face, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He can tell you all kinds of jokes with the most sober face, but at the end he laughs like anybody else.”
“Isabel,” said Cathalina, “what do you think about the military school, do you think that it will be broken up right away?”
“Mercy, no,” said Isabel. “Why, the old United States has to get ready, doesn’t she? Jim said that ‘when he got in it,’ as he put it, even the regular army could not get off the first minute. Is Captain Van Horne’s appointment under the regular army?”
“It can’t be, because at home he did not want them to call him ‘captain’; said it was only a courtesy title of the school.”
“Only the commandant, Donald said,” inserted Betty, “is a regular army officer, and as far as I know, he is retired. I am so anxious to hear what Donald has to say about the latest news.”
“He sings, doesn’t he?”