"Three cheers for Mr. Schermerhorn!" shouted Colonel Freddy. In an instant every fellow was on his feet, every cap was in the air, and a tremendous "Hurrah! hurrah! ti-ga-a-ah!" made the echoes around Camp McClellan wake up in a hurry, and poke their heads out of the hills to see where the cannonading was.
Of course, being boys, the regiment cleared the dishes in astonishing style, and polished their plates so thoroughly that you would hardly have thought they wanted the grand washing they had when dinner was over.
After stowing all the things away neatly in the smokehouse, and arranging their surplus luggage (which had been sent down the previous Saturday), in the lockers, they all had a grand game at fox and geese, which lasted until Freddy, perfectly worn out with laughing and scampering about, exclaimed, "Come, fellows, do let's sit down and be quiet; I'm as tired as if I had walked from here to China."
"Yes, let's be solemn a little while," said Peter. "In these momentous times, we army men ought to be thinking how to fix off the old secessionists and that sort of thing. I move we all sit down in a circle, and the first who laughs shall tell a story."
The boys thought this was a grand idea. So they found a nice place, just beneath the sheltering boughs of the locusts, and, putting the camp stools in a ring, they sat down, to see how solemn they could be. But it was no use; though they pinched up their mouths, and frowned, and did their best to look like a company of highly respectable owls, in two minutes they all burst out laughing, so nearly together that nobody could tell who had begun.
As soon as the broad faces had come back to their proper length, there was a general cry for a story; and as Peter had instituted the new regulation, he undertook to carry it out; so, drawing a long breath to start with, he commenced:
"Once upon a time, there lived a family of bears in a thick wood. Grumpy-growly, the father, was a jolly, cross old fellow—oh! I guess he was! and the little ones didn't dare so much as to snap at a fly without permission, when he was around.
"One day Grumpy-growly went out to take a walk, bidding the young ones to be very good while he was away; for he was a widower, poor fellow! and had to see after his family himself.
"As soon as he was fairly gone, Longclawse, the eldest, said, 'Seems to me, brothers, we have stood this long enough. All the other cubs in the wood can run about as they please, and why should we be kept in this poky old cave? Suppose we try to get away the big log before the door?' for this was what Grumpy-growly put up to keep them at home.
"'Good! I go in for that!' cried Bushyball, Titehugge, and Stubtail, the other cubs.