Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/441



the Wellsburgh Military Academy lacked something in not having any secret societies was becoming more and more clear to the junior class of that popular school. Perhaps the idea would never have occurred to the boys if Rob Pierson had not gone to spend his Christmas holidays with his Philadelphia cousins; but that visit brought the first cloud of dissatisfaction to Rob—and then, of course, to the whole junior class, who always followed Rob’s lead in every thing, without question, from geometry to neckties.

“Got any societies at your old school?” his cousin asked him, one day.

“Societies! No; what for?” exclaimed Rob, in open-mouthed wonderment. “Sounds like girls.” This last with such withering contempt that little Lucy, who had taken a decided liking to him, picked up her book and left the fire-light circle in protest.

“Girls nothing! All the colleges have ’em. We have them at our school; but I suppose you ‘re too busy playing soldiers to find out what college men do.”

“We ‘re too busy with classes and drills to bother with such foolishness,” was Rob’s crushingly delivered answer.

But during the rest of his week in Philadelphia he quietly picked up considerable information about secret societies and how they were run.

A certain subdued air belonging to the return to school and study kept down Rob’s growing discontent with existing things tor a few days. The reaction from two weeks of loafing and fun brought him new energy in the study of geometry, Greek, and Latin, and until Friday night the boys had scarcely a chance to compare notes about their holidays.

A belated Christmas box, coming to a boy from the far West who had spent his two weeks with a friend, gave an occasion for a “pajama party.” Twelve days of rest in the baggage-room of the wrong town not having done serious damage to the comforts in the box, the ten “selectmen,” as those bidden to a feast were called at the Wellsburgh Academy, spent the first ten minutes or so in “sampling” the various good things, regardless of the fine points of manners or table etiquette. Indeed, there was no table—the cookies, figs, nuts, and apples were spread on the counterpane of Willis’s bed, in a medley that would have driven his doting mother mad by its contrast with the daintily wrapped packages which she had so neatly and carefully put up.

“Say, boys,” Rob began when the first edge of his healthy appetite had been dulled, “my cousin goes to Saybrook to school, and they have secret societies, as the men have at college—and at West Point, too, I s’pose. I never thought of it before, but if they have these societies at Saybrook, it stands ta reason we ’ve got to have ’em. We can’t let Saybrook get ahead of us in any way.”

“Right you are, colonel,” murmured the host, rather brokenly by reason of his mouth being stuffed with home-made mince-pie. “I don’t want to get to Yale and find there ’s