It galled him to think that when gentlemen of their standing should treat him with such respect, and when the general regulations of the army provided that all persons of whatsoever rank in the service should observe respect towards sentries, so many old cadets, lolling in the shade of their tent-flies in Company A, so many class-mates skipping along inside his post on the path leading to the shoeblack's or the water-tank, should make audible comments about the "corporal on post."
His life had been spent on the frontier, where the safety of the camp depended on the vigilance of the sentry, and where no man, high or low, behaved towards a soldier on such duty except with the utmost respect. He remembered what McCrea had told him, that even as a sentry on post—indeed, more so at such times than at any other, so long as he was green and unaccustomed to the duty—it was the habit of the old cadets in the old days to "devil" and torment the plebe in every conceivable way. But Geordie argued that he was not green. He knew the main points of sentry duty as well as any cadet, though nowhere are the finer points, the more intricate tests, so taught as they are at the Military Academy.
It was actually his misfortune that he knew so much. Geordie Graham might have been spared many an hour of trouble and injustice and misrepresentation had he not been imbued with the soldier idea of the sacred character of the sentinel. It was one thing to submit to the unwritten laws and customs of the corps of cadets, so long as they were applied to him in his personal capacity. It was a very different matter, however, in his judgment, to be interfered with or molested as a member of the guard.
His first "two hours on" in the morning passed without material annoyance, for most of the corps were out of camp at drill. At dinner-time, after marching down with the guard, he found his class-mates at the B Company table, to which he had been assigned, awaiting his coming with no little eagerness; but as the yearlings began their quizzing the instant he took his seat and unfolded his napkin, Frazier and Burns were forced to be silent. Connell had remained with the relief posted at camp during the absence of the battalion, so Pops had his fire to undergo all alone. The Third Class men hailed him, of course, by his recently discovered title.