"There are two special prigs in chevrons, who have charge of our thumbs and shoulderblades; and when you girls come to see me, _one_ of 'em won't get an introduction, that's all. What do you think he did yesterday? It was hot enough to melt down your ideas, if you had any--hot as the middle line of the equator; and he had been drilling us as if he had never been drilled himself, and didn't know how it felt. So, when drill was over, he stood a lot of us round his tent door in the sun, and then made iced lemonade, and sat there drinking it with us looking on. Give us some? Not quite. Go to the store and buy our own lemons, Rose? Why, we can't get a shoestring without a special order. Corporal Mean smuggled in his sugar from the Mess Hall; and I guess Miss Flyaway brought him the lemons. If you want to know about Miss Flyaway, she's one of the girls; a summer girl, as they say here, and we plebs could spare her till winter just as well as not. She's as bad as a third-class corporal--only we can laugh at her and we can't at him. If we did, we'd be skinned in a minute. This is what I should hear read out after parade: "'Kindred--disrespect to superior officer, at about 4.30 P. M.'--demerits according. Oh, well! we'll wear through somehow; it takes a good deal to kill a man. And they're not all like that. Cadet Captain Steady called me into his tent to-day and gave me a whole lot of good advice that would have gone to mother's heart. There's another Captain, too, Mr. Upright, who's as nice as he can be; and some of the Tacs aren't very bad to take. But we've got one in our company! I just wish you could see him. We call him Towser--because he's always nosing round, and sniffing about everywhere, to see what sort of a dry bone he can find to pick. He hasn't hived any of mine yet, but he spied a whole square inch of paper in front of Randolph's tent and reported him for disorder. You have to polish your shoestrings to go down A Company street, when he's in charge. So whoever sees him coming fires off a volley, and then we all know. Bow--wow--wow--wow--wow--wow!" "You'll like my tentmate, Rig. That's not his name, of course, but we call him so because he's so B. J. about his dress. They don't leave him much hair to brush, but what he has takes up half his spare time." "Now I know mother is aching to put in her questions--just waiting till I get through writing stuff. Well, ma'am, you see, we just _have_ to praise ourselves a little bit here, because if we don't do it, it don't get done; and so I call myself a pretty good boy. Whether I'd suit you exactly, I'll not say. I go to prayer-meeting twice a week and once to Chapel (_have_ to go there, so you needn't give me a credit), and I've not missed reading my chapter one day yet. Mr. Upright came by the other day when I was at it, and he stopped and walked in."