[Illustration: "'I WANT YOU TO COME AND WALK WITH ME,' CONNELL SAID"]
That very evening after supper Connell took Geordie's arm and led him out on the Plain.
"I want you to come and walk with me, old man," he said. "You were going to your room to 'bone,' and I know it. Pops, don't do that. What time we have to spend in the open air you need to take for no other purpose. You'll go to your work with a clearer head."
Geordie protested, but he knew Connell was right. Moreover, letters had come that very day from McCrea and the doctor, both bidding him feel no discouragement because he was making only an average of less than 2.5, "even if you do go down two or three sections," wrote the lieutenant; "and I was scared badly because they sent me from the fifth down to the sixth, but I came out all right." The doctor, too, urged that his boy take heart, and bade him neglect no regular out-door exercise. A great believer in fresh air and sunshine was the doctor. Still, Pops was blue. Connell, a Western lad, with only the drilling of the public schools, had managed to cling to his place in the first section, and with every day was becoming more and more at home in the methods of the section-room.
"Not much. He's generally busy reading, writing, or dozing, and he's impatient of my stupidity, I suppose. Everything seems so easy to him," answered Pops.
"Yes, I never heard such finished recitations. 'Old Scad' just sits there and nods approval, and seldom asks a question." ("Old Scad" was the irreverent title given to a gray-headed lieutenant of artillery by a previous class, and plebes rarely fail to adopt such nicknames.) "Benny's 'maxing' right along just now," continued Connell.
"Do you think he'll be head of the class?" asked Pops.
Connell pondered a moment before replying. "He might, because he's just as fluent in French; but I'll bet my hopes of graduation against the corporal chevrons you're bound to wear next June that if he's head in January he'll never get there again."
"Simply this: Frazier is a sort of fireworks fellow. He's going up with a flash and a roar, but he'll burn out by the time we get into analytical. He isn't a stayer. Mr. Otis was telling me last night that there were cases where fellows who stood head in the plebe January dropped out of sight by the end of the third year. As for Frazier, he'll get found on demerit if he isn't careful. He's smoking cigarettes again. Don't let him light one in the room."