bed."

"We'll stroll along up with you," proposed Darrin.

"No girls for you, either?"

"Not for two numbers. Then we return to the young ladies that we
escorted here."

"Just to think," grunted Joyce, sniffing in the salt air that reached
them from the waterfront, "a good deal more than a year more here before
we get regularly at sea."

"It seems as though we'd been here a long time," sighed Dave. "But I
don't suppose there was ever a midshipman yet who didn't long to get away
from Annapolis and into the real, permanent life on the wave. A West
Point man must feel some of the same longing."

"But he's on the land at West Point," objected Joyce, "and he's still on
land after he graduates and goes to some post. The Army cadet has no such
glorious future to look forward to as has a midshipman."

"Hello, here's Jet," called Dave as a midshipman enveloped in his
overcoat approached them. "Going to the hop, Jet?"

"Will you do me a great favor?" asked Midshipman Jetson.

"Certainly, if possible," agreed Dave cordially.

"Then mind your own business," snapped the other midshipman.

Darrin, who had made it a point to forget the brief unpleasantness of
the football season, received this rebuke with about the same feelings
that a slap in the face would have given him.

The sulky midshipman had stepped past the trio, but Dave, after
swallowing hard, wheeled about and hailed:

"Hold on, there, Mr. Jetson!"

"Well?" demanded Jetson, halting and looking back.

"I don't like your tone, sir."

"And I don't like your face, sir," retorted Jetson. "Nor your cheek,
either, for that matter."

"I tried to treat you pleasantly," Dave went on, hurt and offended.

"Oh! It required an effort, did it?" sneered Jetson.

"Something may have happened that I don't know anything about," Darrin
continued. "It may be that you have some real reason for treating me as
you have just done. If you have any good reason I wish you'd tell me, for
in that case I must have done something that put me in wrong. If that's
the case, I want to make amends."

"Oh--bosh!" grumbled the other midshipman.

"Come on, now!" urged Dave. "Be a man!"

"Then you imply that I am not?" demanded Jetson aggressively.

"Not necessarily," Dave contended. "I just want to make sure, in my own
mind, and I should think you'd be similarly interested."

"If you want to insult me, Mr. Darrin," flared back Jetson, "I'll remain
here long enough to hear you and to