Mark had been making his toilet before the little looking-glass that hung on the tent pole; he turned then and accompanied his friend out of camp and over to Trophy Point, where sat in all stateliness and dignity three solemn-looking seniors, a committee from the first class to Mark Mallory, the desperate and defiant and as yet untamed “B. J.” plebe. But he wasn’t going to remain untamed very long if that committee had anything to do with it.
They arose at his approach.
“Mr. Mallory?” said the spokesman.
Mr. Mallory bowed.
“You come from the first class, I believe,” he said. “Let us proceed right to business.”
The committee, through its spokesman, cleared its throat with a solemn “Ahem!”
“Mr. Mallory,” said he, “I presume you have not forgotten that a short while ago you ventured to defy our class openly. The class has not forgotten it, for such conduct in a plebe cannot be tolerated here. Your conduct ever since you came has been unbearably defiant; you have set at naught every cadet law of the academy. And therefore, as the class warned you beforehand, you must expect trouble.”
Mr. Mallory bowed; he’d had a good deal of it already, he thought to himself.
“The class has been waiting,” continued the other, “for you to recover from the effects of a dislocated shoulder, an injury due to another unpleasant—ahem—accident——”
“Or, to be more specific,” inserted Mark, very mildly, “due to the fact that I was—er—attacked by some—ahem—fifty members of the first class in a body.”