And so even Benny's rush to congratulate Geordie and the impulsive sacrifice of that immaculate tile had softened few hearts. Donning the cadet uniform and silently resuming his place in the ranks of Company B, Frazier strove to ask no favors and resent no coldness. He was not tall enough to join the grenadiers of Company A. There was something pathetic in the big dark eyes as he, a First Class man in years, but a no class man in law, stood irresolute in the company street the day they marched into camp. Yearlings and all had their tents chosen. There was no welcome for him. It was just as well that Mrs. Frazier obeyed her boy's injunctions and kept away until late that summer. For a fortnight or so, until the plebes came into camp, Benny lived all alone. Then, assigned to a tent with Murray and Reed, two cadet privates of the class with whom he had never had dealings and by whom he was treated with cold civility, he made no complaint, nor did he seem to seek their better graces. But Pops never failed to hunt him up if a day went by without Benny's coming to the first captain's tent for a chat. He got Ross to give Frazier a seat at his table in Grant Hall, and would have interceded in other ways, but Frazier himself said no. "I have head enough left to see that I have got to work out my own salvation, Geordie, and you can't make them like me."
And so the humbled fellow kept his own counsel, hearing some pretty hard things occasionally, but saying nothing. The former terror of the plebes in nowise meddled with them now. Mourning for his father was sufficient reason for not attending the hops which, despite his managership, Pops himself very frequently failed to visit. It was lonely work going on guard as the sole representative of an absent class, but Frazier made no remonstrance. There were little points in which he could not overcome the slothful tendencies of his earlier days. He was sometimes late or unprepared, but he took his reports without a murmur and walked post like a man.
The summer wore on. Up with the dawn, out in the sun and the breeze from morn till night, hastening from one brisk martial exercise to another, sometimes in saddle commanding a platoon in the roar and dash of battery drill, sometimes a division in the school of the battalion, sometimes at the great guns of the sea-coast battery, waking the echoes of the Highlands with the thunder of their report and the shriek of the shells towards Target Point, sometimes on the firing-line of the skirmishers, Geordie seemed to broaden with every day, and as first captain he was vigilance itself. "Even in Rand's day you never saw better order or discipline in the hall or in the ranks," said Connell, "and the best of it is, the battalion wants to do as he wishes."
