Thus enjoined the Seven resolved themselves into a business meeting, to discuss the important question whether they should accept that invitation from Judge Fuller’s daughter. It is not the purpose of this story to report the discussion, but simply to say that they decided emphatically in the affirmative.
They were going to that party.
Grace Fuller was a member of the Banded Seven, which under its full and complete title was known as “The Banded Seven and One Angel;” she was the angel. Mark Mallory had swam out and rescued her from a capsizing sailboat, and as a result of that the girl, though she was the belle of West Point, and considered the most beautiful girl about the post, had declared her sympathies with those desperate plebes, and vowed to aid them in the fight against hazing.
There was much talking necessary to settle the details of that most important excursion—and incidentally quite some laughing over the adventure which had caused so much excitement that afternoon. The costumes and disguises they had worn were still lying in the woods where they had left them.
They were impatient plebes who went to bed that night, and blew out their light to wait. Four of them slept in an A Company tent, and the other three were in Company B, just across the way. When the watchful “tac” went the rounds with his lantern they were all snoring diligently, but in their haste they barely gave him time to get back to his tent and extinguish the light, before they were up again and in their uniforms, and stealing out to the side of the camp.
They passed in safety one of the sentries, a plebe whom they had “fixed” beforehand, and then the whole seven set out on a run for the woods. It was then about half-past ten, which Chauncey, their authority upon etiquette, assured them was the correct time for a party to begin. Just then they came upon the hiding place of the cit’s clothing, which gave Chauncey something still more important to think about.
Chauncey had been planning all the way how he was going to have that full dress suit and be the one aristocrat in the crowd; he knew it would never enter poor Indian’s head to protest.
But when Chauncey tried it the rest merrily vowed that a man who disowned a suit in the afternoon had no right to wear it in the evening, and the result was that the grumbling plebe donned his graceful white flannels again and Indian’s bulging figure was crammed into the evening suit. The black-robed Parson stood by in solemn state meanwhile, and remarked occasionally that “as my friend Shakespeare observed, ’Consistency, thou art a jewel,’ yea, by Zeus!”
“Though,” the Parson added, “I am by no means convinced that William Shakespeare was the author of the words. I find that——”
The Parson found that he was talking to the woods by that time, for the rest of the crowd had fled in mock terror, setting out for the river and leaving the solemn lecturer to follow at his leisure. His gigantic strides soon brought him up with them again, however, and the address was continued until the party had reached the Hudson’s shore.