[Illustration: "'TAKE THAT ONE, THEN,' SAID MR. LEONARD"]
It took little time to arrange their canvas home in the prescribed military order. Pops was a veteran campaigner, and had slept in many a tent or bivouac in the Far West, so the quarters that struck his comrades as crowded were almost palatial to him. When they placed their loads in front of it at six forty-five, all they saw was a trimly-pitched wall-tent, the walls themselves neatly looped up so as to allow the air to circulate freely, the tent and its "overcoat," or fly, both stretched taut and smooth, without crease or wrinkle, a square, smooth, six-inch-high platform or floor covering the ground from front tent pole almost to the one in rear. An elongated wooden box painted dark green, divided into four compartments, with lids opening at the top, extended almost from front to rear of the platform on the west side of the tent. This was to be their chest of drawers. A wooden rod hung about eighteen inches under the ridge-pole; this was to be their wardrobe, and of other furniture there was none. Under the brief instruction of a cadet corporal they began with the rudiments of their military house-keeping. First, their four big double blankets were folded in a square very nearly four feet across, and with the folded edges to the front and inside, accurately piled one upon the other. Then the four pillows in their white cases were evenly laid upon the blankets. Then the four comforters or quilts, folded like the blankets, were evenly laid on top, edges vertical, and that was the way in which the beds were made up every morning after reveille. The pile thus formed occupied the corner of the floor opposite the locker or chest of drawers at the back of the tent. The locker was the name given the dark green chest, and the "locker" had neither lock nor key. Under the supervision of the cadet corporal the plebe quartet contributed the items necessary to their summer house-keeping. A looking-glass, sixteen by twelve, in a plain wooden frame, was hung on the front tent pole, tilted a trifle forward at the top. A water-bucket was deposited at the front edge of the platform close to the locker. A washbowl, bottom outward, was leaned against the front edge of the platform close to the bucket. A soap-dish was on the platform behind the basin. Candlestick, candles, cleaning materials, etc., were deposited in a cylindrical tin box that stood at the foot of the rear tent pole behind the base of the arm-rack.