“Shall we go?” inquired some one.
“Go!” cried Texas. “O’ course we’ll go!”
“But it’s out of bounds,” protested “Indian,” the fat and timid Joseph Smith. “It’s ’way across the river at Garrisons, and if we’re found out we’ll be expelled. Bless my soul!”
“’Tain’t the fust time we’ve been out o’ bounds,” observed Texas, grinning. “An’ ef I thought ’twar the last, I don’t think I’d stay in this hyar stupid old place.”
“But we’ve no clothes to go in, bah Jove!” objected Master Chauncey Van Rensselaer Mount-Bonsall, of Fifth Avenue, New York. “We cawn’t wear our uniforms, y’know, for some one would recognize the deuced things, bah Jove; and we have nothing else.”
“Nothin’ else!” exclaimed Texas. “Ain’t we got the ones we wore this hyar very Saturday afternoon when we ran off to see the circus down to Highlan’ Falls? Kain’t we wear them?”
“Wear them!” gasped Chauncey, the prim and particular “dude.” “Bah Jove, I should like to see myself going to call on a girl, y’ know, in the horrible rags we wore!”
“I guess we know Grace Fuller well enough to make allowances,” put in Mark, laughing. “You know she told us she was going to ask us to steal over and pay her a visit some night. She said the cadets often do.”
“But not in such costumes as we wore,” protested Chauncey.
“I don’t imagine they had much better,” answered Mark. “They’d hardly wear their uniforms through Garrisons, and up the road we’d have to follow. And if they had cit’s clothing smuggled in, I doubt if it was much of a fit. However, we’ve got till taps to talk it over.”