“Please, sir, Lieutenant Adeler,” begged Mousey, “we heard that you’ll give out the list of Soph. corporals to-morrow, and that Griffin may be left out, because you were afraid it would look—not look right—if you appointed—Hike, being a personal friend of yours—Please, sir, we don’t want to butt in, but the whole class, honest, sir—”
“Does the whole class really want him?” queried Lieutenant Adeler.
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. I understand.”
Next day when the military appointments were announced, Hike’s name was among the corporals. And the only complaint the school made was that Hike was not first sergeant.
CHAPTER XXI
LEFT EARED DONGAN
Left Eared Dongan, Sophomore, jester of the Fig Tree Celebration and candidate for football-end, was not a Great Man, just then. He was an aeroplane. It may have looked as though he was merely a boy, running over a hilltop, two miles from the academy, waving his arms madly. But that was a mistake. Not only was he really an Updegraff monoplane, but also he was breaking all records. Of course he was alone. He would not, for his chances of becoming end, have allowed any one to see him making b’lieve.
He twisted the second button on his coat; which, as every aviator knows, steers an aeroplane (that is, when the aeroplane is a Santa Benicia Sophomore). Then he pulled his nose, which turns down the elevating planes, and puffed up the last stretch of Bilbunet Hill.
He saw a bunch of chaparral, and suddenly he was not an aeroplane. Not at all. He was Colonel Church, leading a brilliant night attack on Yaqui Indians. But his trousers got fuzzy, and he became an aeroplane again.
He soared through a little pass, toward a deserted shack once occupied by a shepherd, away from all the regular hill-paths. He sat down with his back against the board walls, trying to work out the following terrific problem: