"I hear you are going to fight," she began as soon as she saw him; there was a worried smile on her face which made Mark smile involuntarily.
"It's nothing very desperate," he answered. "So you needn't be alarmed. You see it's necessary for me to fight once in a while else you and I couldn't play all our beautiful B. J. tricks."
"I guess you'd better go then," she laughed. "But I don't like it a bit. You'll come home all bruised up and covered with court-plaster, and I shan't have anything to do with you until you get handsome again."
"Thanks for that last word 'again,'" responded he with a laugh. Then, he added, more seriously, "How did you find all this out? I thought none of the cadets were going to speak to you since the hop?"
"Pooh!" said Grace. "You didn't suppose they meant that, did you? Half of them are beginning to capitulate already. I knew they wouldn't hold out."
"I knew it too," thought Mark to himself; he was watching the girl's beautiful face, with its expression of action and life.
"It seems then that all my rivals are back again," he said, aloud.
"None of them are your rivals," answered the girl; and then she added, quickly: "But that wasn't what I sent for you to tell you. I have been finding out some more secrets. I think if I keep on practicing on the cadets I'll be quite a diplomatist and confidence man by and by."
"What have you found out now?"
"Simply that the whole first class proposes to keep you from fighting."