"You may wait a long time," sneered Bunny. "No, I won't. If you're not out of here in a hurry I'll help you through the back door." Not until then did Bunny Hepburn realize that he was actually discharged. "Get out now," ordered the head waiter, looking as if he would be glad of an opportunity to help the discharged one through the back door. "Oh, all right. I'll git," snarled Bunny Hepburn, thrusting on his hat and slouching out through the door. "But I'll get even with that cheap Army officer in short order!" Like some other inconsequential fellows of his class, Bunny was usually a man of his word in matters of revenge. CHAPTER III ROWDY VERSUS REGULAR After a pleasant evening Hal and Noll escorted their parents homeward at somewhere around half-past ten o'clock. Both young soldiers, however, were still so full of the day's news and so wide awake that neither felt at all like turning in for sleep as yet. So they met immediately afterward for a slow stroll through the streets on this warm summer evening. "Where shall we go?" asked Hal, as the chums met. "I don't care," Noll answered. "One set of streets will do as well as another." "We'll take pains, anyway, to keep on the well-lighted streets," Hal proposed smilingly. "It wouldn't do for two poor, lonely soldiers to go into any of the darker quarters where danger may lurk." "Tell you what we'll do then," offered Noll. "We'll get a policeman to walk around with us and protect us from harm." "Now let us have done with fooling for a little while, Noll. I remember something that Prescott was telling me once." "_Lieutenant_ Prescott," Terry interrupted quietly. "Guess again, chum. You forget that we have been lieutenants since--well, since four o'clock this afternoon. So I am within my rights in simply calling him by his last name." "True," admitted Noll. "I've been in the ranks so long that, somehow, it seems hard to realize that I am suddenly an officer, and the equal of any other second lieutenant in the Army." "Prescott was telling me," went on Hal, "of a great friend he and Holmes had at West Point. He was a young Virginian, Anstey by name. Now Prescott and Holmes both feel as though they'd gladly give their left hands for a chance to grip Anstey's paw; yet since leaving West Point Prescott and Holmes have not laid eyes on Anstey--which brings me up to the question: How are we going to feel if you and I are constantly serving on different sides of the earth from each other?" Lieutenant Noll Terry looked almost startled. "By Jove, I hadn't thought of that," he muttered. "I've been thinking of it," Hal rejoined. "Now, Noll, what is the matter with you and me drawing up a request, both signing it, asking that, if in accordance with military interests, we be assigned to the same regiment and battalion?" "To whom should such a request go?" "To the adjutant general of the Army, I imagine, since neither of us as yet belongs to any regiment or department."