"Well, I did at first. It was a kind of novelty. Come, let's leave it. I will."
"But how can you?"
"Easy enough. I am under age, and my father 'll get me off."
"I should think you would be ashamed to ask him to," Frank could not help saying, with honest contempt.
Jack was not offended this time by his plainness, for he had learned that those are not, by any means, our worst friends, who truly tell us our faults.
"I don't care," he said, putting on an air of recklessness. "I ain't going to lead this miserable dog's life in camp any longer, if I have to desert"—lowering his voice to a whisper; "we can desert just as easy as not, Frank, if we take a notion."
"I, for one," said Frank, indignantly, "shan't take a notion to do anything so dishonorable. We enlisted of our own free will, and I think it would be the meanest and most dishonest thing we could do to——"
"Hush!" whispered Jack. "There's Atwater; he'll hear us."
At midnight the drummer boy was awakened by a commotion in the tent.