"I call the gentleman to order," laughed Mark. "Hazing's the business on hand. Hazing, and not hancestors."
"I know," expostulated Chauncey, "but I hate to be called a plebe, ye know. As I was going to say, however, they'll haze us most. Mark has—aw—fooled them a dozen times, bah Jove! Texas chastised four of them. Parson, I'm told, chased half a dozen once. My friend Indian here got so deuced mad the other day that he nearly killed one, don't ye know. Dewey's worse, and as for me and my friend Sleepy here—aw—bah Jove!—--"
"You did better than all of us!" put in Mark.
Chauncey paused a moment to make a remark about "those deuced drills, ye know, which kept a fellah from ever having a clean collah, bah Jove!" And then he continued.
"I just wanted to say, ye know, that we were selected for the hazing to-night, and that we might as well do something desperate at once, bah Jove! that's what I think, and so does my friend Sleepy. Don't you, Sleepy?"
"I ain't a-thinkin' abaout it 't all," came a voice from the bed where Methusalem Zebediah Chilvers, the farmer, lay stretched out.
"Sleepy's too tired," laughed Mark. "It seems to be the unanimous opinion of the crowd," he continued, after a moment's pause, "that we might just as well be bold. In other words, that we have no hazing."
"B'gee!" cried Dewey, springing to his feet, excitedly. "B'gee, I didn't say that! No, sir!"
"What did you say, then?" inquired Mark.
"I said that we shouldn't let them haze us, b'gee, and I meant it, too. I never said no hazing! Bet cher life, b'gee! I was just this moment going to make the motion that we carry the war into the enemy's country, that we upset West Point traditions for once and forever, and with a bang, too. In other words"—here the excitable youngster paused, so that his momentous idea might have due weight—"in other words, b'gee, that we haze the yearlings!"