“Yes; but——”
“And more yet if it was at night?”
“Of course. But what——”
“Oh, pshaw!” cried Mark. “How much longer must I wait? Do you want me to tell you the whole thing? Look here! Suppose you were off in the woods, eating a supper, beyond limits at night, and should meet with a blue-uniformed officer who looked like the dreaded Lieutenant Allen—would you run?”
The six “idiots” saw it then!
With one whoop of joy that fairly shook the camp they had leaped to their feet and made a spring for Mark; after that you would have called them idiots no longer, but ordinary maniacs. For they were dancing about, laughing, hurrahing, slapping each other on the back, rolling on the ground for joy. They had the plot at last! They were going to masquerade as officers and fool those yearlings! There never were seven such hysterical plebes since the founding of Rome, when “plebes” first began to exist.
They were incoherent and breathless for at least ten minutes after Mark’s revelation. At last, however, Texas managed to gasp:
“Where are you going to get a blue uniform—like Allen’s?”
And Mark, equally out of breath, managed to answer:
“I’ll take his!”