Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point Part 13

Belle, who was nearest, bowed and held out her hand.

But Laura drew herself up haughtily. "Mr. Dougla.s.s," she answered coldly, "my apologies to you, but I don't wish to know---Mr. Jordan!"

Belle caught the name again, and remembered.

"Oh!" she cried, s.n.a.t.c.hing her hand away ere Jordan could touch it.

"I'm sorry, ladies," stammered Dougla.s.s. But they found themselves confronted by rear views of two shapely pairs of young shoulders, while Mrs. Bentley had the air of looking through the young men without being able to see either.

Two very much disconcerted cadets, and very red in the face, stiffly resumed their caps and marched away.

"Great Scott, what did that mean?" gasped Jordan, struck all in a heap by his strange reception.

Cadet Dougla.s.s gasped.

"Jordan," he exclaimed contritely, "I'm the greatest a.s.s in the corps!"

"You must be!" exploded d.i.c.k's enemy. "But what was the cause of it all?"

"Why, Jordan, you---you see-----"

"Who is Miss Bentley?"

"Jordan, she's Prescott's girl!"

"What?" gasped the other cadet, staring at his cla.s.smate.

"Fact!"

"Prescott's---girl?"

"Yes."

"Jove, a puppy like Prescott has no business with a superb girl like that."

"All the same, Jordan, the fact will prevent you from knowing her."

"Now, I'm not so sure of that!" cried Jordan suddenly, with strange fire in his eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing," mumbled Jordan, suddenly recovering himself.

Then, under his breath, he chuckled gleefully:

"Miss Bentley is just struck on the uniform, of course. A girl like that couldn't care for a misfit like Prescott. Well, he won't be in the uniform much longer. I won't lose sight of Miss Bentley. I'll find her again when Prescott is out of the uniform for good!"

Now, aloud, he asked:

"Doug, do you happen to remember Miss Bentley's first name?"

"Larry," answered Cadet Dougla.s.s absently.

"Stop that!" cried Jordan almost fiercely.

"Oh, a thousand pardons, Jordan. I'm so rattled I don't know what I'm doing or saying. The girl's first name is Laura. Peach, isn't she?"

"Laura! That's a sweet name," murmured Jordan to himself. His mind was now running riot, not only with plans to drive d.i.c.k Prescott out of the Army, but also to win the heart of Laura Bentley.

"Hold on, Jord," begged Dougla.s.s, halting and leaning against a post in the veranda structure. "Don't take me to your sister just yet. Let me get my breath, my nerves, my wits back again."

"Take an hour," advised Jordan laconically. "You need it. Didn't you know Miss Bentley was Prescott's girl?"

"Yes; but it had slipped my memory. It's mighty hard, when you come to think of it, to remember the girls of so many hundreds of fellows," explained Cadet Dougla.s.s plaintively.

Ten minutes later d.i.c.k and Greg appeared, greeting the ladies.

Mrs. Bentley a.s.sented to their going around to the north side of the porch, whence they could look up the river to the lights of Newburgh.

"We very nearly had an adventure, d.i.c.k," laughed Belle.

"Yes?"

"We very nearly shook hands with Mr. Jordan. It was Laura's quick cry that saved me, just in the nick of time, from touching hands with the fellow."

Miss Meade then related their experience, and the discomfiture of Cadets Dougla.s.s and Jordan.

"That's just about like Doug," observed Greg Holmes. "I'll bet he never thought until Laura called off the signal for the kick."

"What's that?" demanded Miss Bentley.

"Pardon me," apologized Greg. "I think in football terms altogether too often. But I'm glad Jordan saw the goal and then lost it."

"I think d.i.c.k wants to tell us something about the fellow Jordan, and some of the other cadets," Belle hinted.

Between them the chums told the story of how the "silence" had come to be imposed. Prescott did not, however, tell his feminine visitors how he had happened to catch Jordan outside the guard line.

"How did that happen?" asked Laura innocently.

"Now, I'd tell you before I would any one else on earth," protested d.i.c.k with warmth, "but I haven't told Greg or anyone else. I had good military reasons, not personal ones."

"Oh!" replied Laura. And, not understanding, she felt more than a little hurt by d.i.c.k's failure to answer frankly.

Both girls, however, talked very comfortingly, and Mrs. Bentley very sensibly aided their efforts. All three tried to make it quite plain to d.i.c.k Prescott that no amount, or consequence, of lack of understanding by his cla.s.smates could make any difference with his standing in their eyes.

Presently Mrs. Bentley consented to the girls strolling down the road between the hotel and cadet barracks. d.i.c.k, of course, walked with Laura, while Greg and Belle remained at a discreet, out-of-earshot distance.

At last they stood again by the gateway through the shrubbery at the edge of the hotel grounds.