During the first day's drilling of the squad to which Ignace belonged, the sergeant showed becoming patience with the clumsy Pole's painful efforts to obey orders. Two trying sessions with Ignace on the next day sent his scanty stock of forbearance to the winds. At the morning drill the sergeant had, with difficulty, mastered his growing irritation. Ordered out for drill again that afternoon, Ignace received the rebuke that had been hovering behind the sergeant's lips since first he had set eyes on the unfortunate Pole. "See here, you," rapped out the disgusted "non-com," after a particularly aggravated display of awkwardness had aroused his pent-up ire. "Where do you think you are, anyway? This is no boiler-factory. You're in the Army now! Lift up your feet! You're not stubbing along to work. Pick up your head! First thing you know you'll be stepping on your neck. That's a little more like it. Now hold it for two minutes, if you can. If you can't--into the awkward squad you go to-morrow. Pay attention and do as you're told _when_ you're told. Every time you make a move you make it just in time to queer your squad. Now this is the last time I'm going to tell you. I've got something better to do than splitting my throat yelling at you." This scathing bawling-out of unlucky Ignace occurring just before the drill ended, he escaped, for that day at least, the humiliation of being bundled into the dreaded awkward squad. But to-morrow was yet to be reckoned with. In consequence, he looked a shade more melancholy than usual when, the drill period over, he dejectedly moped along toward the barracks with Jimmy. A short distance from it, they encountered Bob and Roger, who were also returning from a period of, to them, strenuous drill. As recruits, it would be some little time before they would be ready to adhere to the regular daily program of infantry drill. "Hello, fellows!" greeted Bob. "Hike along with us and let's hear the latest. How goes drill?" "Oh, pretty fair." Jimmy shrugged his shoulders. Ignace, however, shuffled along beside Jimmy in gloomy silence. "Cheer up, Iggy." Guessing the reason for the Pole's dejection, Bob gave him a friendly slap between his again sagging shoulders. "For goodness' sake, _brace_ up! When you hump over like that your coat fits you, _not_. You'd better shove a stick under your arms and across your shoulders, and spend your time until Retreat hiking around camp that way. It'll be as good as shoulder braces." "So will I." A gleam of purpose, which Bob failed to note, shot into the Pole's china-blue eyes, as, with a deep sigh, he threw back his shoulders. "You'd better stop shuffling your feet, too." Now on the subject, Bob decided to call his disconsolate "Brother's" attention to this unsoldierlike habit. "Pick 'em up like this." Bob took a few extravagantly high steps in a purely waggish spirit.