"Any more than you do me, I suppose," drawled Frazier, interrupting. "Now that you've got your chevrons, and passed to the Third Class, you've no further use for the fellow that helped you to both."
Graham colored. It was so utterly false and unjust.
"I've no word to say against you, Frazier, and you know it. I am obliged to you for what help you gave me, but I don't think I owe either my chevrons or my gain in standing to you."
"Oh, you've had this thing all cut and dried for weeks," said Benny, sneering. "You're simply moving over into Connell's room as a preliminary to moving into camp with him, leaving me to find a tent-mate at the last moment."
"I am not going to Connell's. I am not going to camp. I told you so," said Geordie, gulping down his wrath, and speaking—as he had seen McCrea, when he was very angry—slowly and deliberately.
"Where, then? Where are you going to? Surely"—and here a sudden light dawned on Benny—"surely _you_'ve not been turned out over plebes. You are? _You?_ Well, may I be blessed! Listen to this, fellows," he cried, rushing across the hall, raging within himself with envy, baffled hope and ambition, bitter jealousy and remorse, all intermingled—"listen to this: Corporal Pops turned out over plebes!"
"Well, why not?" answered the yearling addressed; while his room-mate coolly demanded:
"What is there that seems ridiculous to you in that, Frazier?" And he, too, went in to congratulate Graham, while Benny dashed miserably down-stairs in search of some one to sympathize with him, and some one to whom to tell the story of Graham's treachery.
"Upbraided Pops for going back on him about the tent, did he?" said Benton after tattoo that night. "Well, the moment it was known, five days ago, that I was to act as sergeant-major this summer, Frazier came to ask me to choose him for a tent-mate and battalion clerk. He can make out a prettier set of papers than any man in the class, but I'd rather do all the work myself, and any fellow can tell him so that likes to."
And so for two weeks after the battalion went into camp Pops remained on duty at the menagerie, proud and happy in the trust reposed in him. He was the junior of the corporals detailed for this important and onerous duty. Under the supervision of Lieutenant Allen and the command of Cadet Captain Rice, these young corporals, who but a year ago were undergoing their own initiation, were become the instructors and disciplinarians of the new-comers, as well as their defenders against yearling depredations.