Then, remembering something he had heard, Stubbs continued quickly:
"You're in a little trouble of some kind, aren't you, old man?"
"Oh, I'm in con." growled Mr. Jordan.
"Con." is the brief designation for "confinement."
"Some report this morning, eh?"
"Yes; that dog Prescott sprung a roorback on me. Sit down, won't
you?"
"No, thank you," replied Cadet Stubbs more coolly. "Jordan, `dog'
is a pretty extreme word to apply to a brother cadet."
"Oh, are you one of that fellow's admirers?" demanded the man
in con.
"I've always been an admirer of manliness," replied Stubbs boldly.
"Then how can you stand for a bootlick?" shot out Jordan angrily.
"I don't stand for a bootlick," replied Cadet Stubbs. "I never
did."
"Now, I don't want to play baby," went on Jordan half eagerly.
"I'm not resenting, on my own account, what happened to-day.
But it was an outrage on general principles, for the affair made
a fool of me before a lot of new yearlings. Stubbs, we're first
classmen, and we shouldn't be humiliated before yearlings in this
manner."
"I wasn't there," replied Stubbs. "I was over at the rifle range,
you know."
"Then I'll tell you what happened."
Cadet Jordan began a narration of the scene that had ended in
his being relieved from engineering instruction that forenoon.
Jordan didn't exactly lie, which is always a dangerous thing
for a West Point cadet to do, but he colored his narrative so
cleverly as to make it rather plain that Cadet Prescott had acted
beyond his real authority.
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