"What's up?" cried the four.
"I am coming to that," said the Parson, gravely, stretching out his long shanks, drawing up his trousers, and displaying his sea-green socks. "This same morning—and my friend Indian will substantiate my statement, for he was there—a low, ignorant cadet corporal did enter into my room, for inspection, by Zeus, and after generally displaying his ill-manners, he turned to me and conveyed the extraordinary information that, according to rules, forsooth, I must be deprived of the dearest object of my affections, solace of my weary hours, my friend in time of need, my companion in sickness, which through all the trials of adversity has stuck to me closer than a brother, my only joy, my——"
"What?" cried the four, by this time wrought up to the highest pitch of indignation and excitement.
"My one refuge from the cares of life," continued the solemn Parson, "the one mitigating circumstance in this life of tribulation, the only——"
"What? What? What?"
"What? Of all things what, but this? What but my life, my pride, my hope—my beloved volume of 'Dana's Geology,' friend of my——"
And the roar of laughter which came then made the sentry out on the street jump in alarm. The laughing lasted until the cry came:
"New cadets turn out!" which meant drill; and it lasted after that, too, so that Cadet Spencer, drillmaster, "on duty over plebes," spent the next hour or two in wondering what on earth his charges kept snickering at. Poor Texas was the subject of a ten-minute discourse upon "impertinence and presumption," because he was guilty of the heinous offense of bursting out laughing in the midst of one of the irate little drillmaster's tirades.