Buddie was enthusiastically happy, however, for when the revision of the cadet appointments was announced very few changes were made except among the corporals. Benton held his place as first, Connell rose from fourth to third, Ames, more studious than military, dropped a few files, and Geordie made the biggest rise of anybody. From fourteenth he climbed to eighth, jumping among others Crandal, and this in Buddie's eyes was better than standing high in scholarship.
With all his earnest nature Geordie threw himself into the work before him. Connell, with his clear, logical head and steady application, speedily proved of the utmost service to his less brilliant chum, for, so far from resenting request for explanation, he was perpetually inquiring if Geordie saw through this, that, and the other thing, and resenting, if anything, the reluctance of his room-mate to ask for aid instead of wasting time groping in the dark.
"Well," said Pops, "I don't want to give up until certain I can't do it myself, and it takes time."
This in itself was a far better condition of things than existed the previous year. Then there was another. Connell was every bit as orderly and careful as Pops. He held that it was unsoldierly to be indifferent to regulations. From first to last of September neither received a single demerit, and Connell was winning high and Graham good marks in every academic duty.
[Illustration: "THE SKIRMISH DRILLS WERE FULL OF SPIRIT AND INTEREST"]
The autumn weather was gorgeous. The afternoon battalion and skirmish drills were full of spirit and interest. Then came early October, early frosts, gorgeous foliage all over the heights, and, above all, their first lessons in the riding-hall. The year of gymnastic training had measurably prepared them, and Frazier had ridden, so he informed his cronies, ever since he was big enough to straddle a Shetland; he therefore was all impatience to show the class how perfectly he was at home _à cheval_. But like many and many another youth, poor Benny found there was a vast difference between sitting a natty English pigskin on a bridlewise and gaited steed, and riding a rough, hard-mouthed cavalry "plug," whose jaws and temper had been wrenched by his abnormal employment as a draught-horse at battery drill. Three days' chafing sent Frazier to hospital, while Pops rode higher into popular favor.