until after parade," she finally says.

"Simply inhuman!" answers her companion with commendable gravity, but
with humorous twinkle about his eyes. "Is it worth all the long
journey, and all the excitement in which your mother tells me you've
been plunged for the past month?"

"Worth it, Uncle Jack?" and the blue eyes flash upon him indignantly.
"Worth it? You wouldn't ask if you knew it all, as I do."

"Possibly not," says Uncle Jack, whimsically. "I haven't the advantage
of being a girl with a brother and a baker's dozen of beaux in bell
buttons and gray. I'm only an old fossil of a 'cit,' with a scamp of a
nephew and that limited conception of the delights of West Point which
one can derive from running up there every time that versatile youngster
gets into a new scrape. You'll admit my opportunities have been
frequent."

"It isn't Willy's fault, and you know it, Uncle Jack, though we all know
how good you've been; but he's had more bad luck and--and--injustice
than any cadet in the corps. Lots of his classmates told me so."

"Yes," says Uncle Jack, musingly. "That is what your blessed mother,
yonder, wrote me when I went up last winter, the time Billy submitted
that explanation to the commandant with its pleasing reference to the
fox that had lost its tail--you doubtless recall the incident--and came
within an ace of dismissal in consequence."

"I don't care!" interrupts Miss Nan, with flashing eyes. "Will had
provocation enough to say much worse things; Jimmy Frazer wrote me so,
and said the whole class was sticking up for him."

"I do not remember having had the honor of meeting Jimmy Frazer,"
remarks Uncle Jack, with an aggravating drawl that is peculiar to him.
"Possibly he was one of the young gentlemen who didn't call, owing to
some temporary impediment in the way of light prison----"

"Yes; and all because he took Will's part, as I believe," is the
impetuous reply. "Oh! I'll be so thankful when they're out of it all."

"So will they, no doubt. 'Sticking up'--wasn't that Mr. Frazer's
expression?--for Bill seems to have been an expensive luxury all round.
Wonder if sticking up is something they continue when they get to their
regiments? Billy has two or three weeks yet in which to ruin his chances
of ever reaching one, and he has exhibited astonishing aptitude for
tripping himself up thus far."

"Uncle Jack! How can you speak so of Willy, when he is so devoted to
you? When he gets to his regiment th