“Radicals!” repeated Jones. “In modern politics a radical is a person who advocates extreme measures of reform. Radical is good. Gordon, the Radical.”
“I understand all about that,” said Cony. “But are you boys willing that he should boss the academy? If you were major of the battalion do you imagine that you could keep him inside the grounds if he didn’t want to stay? Not by a long shot. He would find some way to outwit you, and the harder you made it for him, the better he would like it. That’s the kind of a cadet his father was, and Don is just like him. I know it, for I have learned to read boys as easily as I can read so many books.”
“But you don’t understand it, smart as you think you are,” exclaimed Lester, who was enraged at the imputation that was thus cast upon the skill and cunning of himself and his companions. “You see before you at this moment a crowd of fellows who are as sharp as Don Gordon ever dare be, and who have quite as good a supply of courage.”
“I can’t see it,” answered Cony, with something like a ring of contempt in his tones. “I was sorry to hear that Gordon had quit guard-running—”
“I can easily believe that,” interrupted Jones, with a smile and a sidelong glance at his companions. “Don was always well supplied with the needful, and he was not at all backward about spending it. When he asked for money, the superintendent never refused to let him have it.”
“I wasn’t thinking about his money,” said Cony, hastily. “I admired his pluck, his ingenuity in baffling the guards, and more than all, I liked to talk to him, for he is smarter than a steel trap. I say I was sorry to hear that Don had gone over to Egan and that crowd,” he added, addressing himself to Lester, “for I knew that we should see no more of him here, unless he happened to look in of a Saturday; but when I heard that it was you who proposed that runaway expedition in Mr. Packard’s yacht, I told myself that the boys had another leader who was fully as daring as any they had ever had.”
“And it is my opinion that they were, and still are, satisfied with the change,” answered Lester, with great complacency. “Ask them if we didn’t see lots of fun while we were cruising in the Sylph, and see what their reply will be.”
“Yes; but you stopped at that,” exclaimed Cony. “One single, solitary plan was all your brain would hold.”
Cony might have added that that single plan never originated in Lester’s brain. The latter never would have thought of it if it had not been for Huggins. Cony knew just how much the academy boys thought of Lester as a leader, for he had heard through Jones that Enoch Williams had pronounced him a fraud of the first water; but he wanted to wake him up and set him to work at something, if he could, for his revenue had fallen off considerably since Don Gordon declared that an absolute stop must be put to guard-running.
“You don’t seem to have any originality about you,” continued Cony, still addressing his remarks to Lester. “You are a boy of one idea; and now that you have got that out of your head, you don’t seem to be able to scare up any more. If you are fit to lead your comrades, you will prove it before many more days have passed over your head.”