Of all the boys in the school, there was no other set so closely bound together in all their tastes and pursuits, as the little group of seniors and juniors who were most often to be found in the Arnolds’ room, or with Max and Louis, across the hall. For the past two years their intimacy had been growing steadily. Other friendships had sprung up and died away, in the meantime; but these seven lads stood firmly together, never quarrelling and rarely disagreeing, in spite of the wide difference in their characters. Instead of that, indeed, they were a mutual help and check to each other, so that steady Alex Sterne was stirred up by the irrepressible Max whom he vainly tried to keep in order; while careless Jack and dandified Louis each rubbed off a little of the other’s peculiarity, for though Jack laughed at Louis’s careful precision of speech and dress, he unconsciously lost much of his own slang and disorder by his daily association with his friend.
To this little circle, Leon and Harold King had been admitted, on account of their relationship to Harry and Jack; and except for the mere work of the class-room, they mingled little with the second class cadets, greatly to the disgust and envy of those boys, for the Wilders, as they were called, were the acknowledged leaders of the school. Not only did they number among them the best athletes and brightest pupils, but with them started nearly every change in the public opinion of Flemming, and although the other lads might grumble a little at first, in the end they never failed to follow in their footsteps. None of the other cadets had cared to be on such intimate terms with the teachers, satisfied to drift along from day to-day, in pleasant enough relations with the doctor and his assistants, but regarding them only as very insignificant parts of their school life, as compared with the ball-field or the dinner-table.
As the cadets were leaving the armory, that afternoon, Max and Leon were joined by Osborn who overtook them on the steps.
“Come up to my room this evening in study-hour, you fellows,” he said, in a tone too low to catch the quick ear of Lieutenant Wilde who was just ahead of them. “We’ll have some grub and some games.”