“I know Egan very well. His father’s plantation is next to ours. If he had been anything of a gentleman, I might have been personally acquainted with Hopkins by this time; but, although we traveled in company all the way from Maryland, he never introduced me. Do you know them?”
“I used to see them occasionally last fall, but I have never spoken to either of them,” answered Lester. “By the way, the first sergeant of our company is a near neighbor of mine.”
“Do you mean Bert Gordon? Well, he’s a little snipe. He throws on more airs than a country dancing-master. I have been insulted ever since I have been here,” said Enoch, hotly. “The boys from my own State, who ought to have brought me to the notice of the teachers and of some good fellows among the students, have turned their backs upon me, and told me in so many words, that they don’t want my company.”
“Don and Bert Gordon have treated me in nearly the same way,” observed Lester.
“But, for all that, I have made some acquaintances among the boys in the third class, who gave me a few hints that I intend to act upon,” continued Enoch. “They say the rules are very strict, and that it is of no earthly use for me to try to keep out of trouble. There are a favored few who are allowed to do as they please; but the rest of us must walk turkey, or spend our Saturday afternoons in doing extra duty. Now I say that isn’t fair—is it, Jones?” added Enoch, appealing to a third-class boy who just then came up.
Jones had been at the academy just a year, and of course he was a member of Don Gordon’s class and company. He was one of those who, by the aid of Don’s “Yankee Invention,” had succeeded in making their way into the fire-escape, and out of the building. They failed to get by the guard, as we know, and Jones was court-martialed as well as the rest. His back and arms ached whenever he thought of the long hours he had spent in walking extras to pay for that one night’s fun; and he had made the mental resolution that before he left the academy he would do something that would make those who remained bear him in remembrance. He was lazy, vicious and idle, and quite willing to back up Enoch’s statement.
“Of course it isn’t fair,” said he, after Enoch had introduced him to Lester Brigham. “You needn’t expect to be treated fairly as long as you remain here, unless you are willing to curry favor with the teachers, and so win a warrant or a commission; but that is something no decent boy will do. I can prove it to you. Take the case of Don Gordon: he’s a good fellow, in some respects——”
“There’s where I differ with you,” interrupted Lester. “I have known him for a long time, and I have yet to see anything good about him.”
“I don’t care if you have. I say he’s a good fellow,” said Jones, earnestly. “There isn’t a better boy in school to run with than Don Gordon would be, if he would only get rid of the notion that it is manly to tell the truth at all times and under all circumstances, no matter who suffers by it. He’s as full of plans as an egg is of meat; he is afraid of nothing, and there wasn’t a boy in our set who dared join him in carrying out some schemes he proposed. Why, he wanted to capture the butcher’s big bull-dog, take him up to the top of the building, and then kick him down stairs after tying a tin-can to his tail! He would have done it, too, if any of the set had offered to help him; but I tell you, I wouldn’t have taken a hand in it for all the money there is in America.”
“He must be a good one,” said Enoch, admiringly.