Читать книгу A West Point Treasure; Or, Mark Mallory's Strange Find онлайн

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“Fellows,” said he, “we’ve got just one month to wait, just one month. Then that contemptible fellow will be here to bother us. But in the meantime I say we forget about him. He’s unpleasant to think about. Let’s not mention him again until we see him.”

And the Parson echoed, “Yea, by Zeus.”

The Parson was just the same old parson he was the day he first struck West Point. Frequent hazings had not robbed him of his quiet and classic dignity; and still more frequent battles with “the enemy” had not made him a whit less learned and studious. He was from Boston, was Parson Stanard, and he was proud of it. Also, he was a geologist of erudition most astoundingly deep. He had a bag of most wonderful fossils hidden away in his tent, fossils with names as long as the Parson’s venerable and bony legs in their pale green socks.

The Parson was not wholly devoted to fossils, for he was member No. 3 in our Banded Seven, of which Mark was the leader. No. 4 was “Indian,” the fat and gullible and much hazed Joe Smith, of Indianapolis. After him came the merry and handsome Dewey, otherwise known as “B’gee!” the prize story-teller of the crowd. Chauncey, surnamed “the dude,” and Sleepy, “the farmer,” made up the rest of that bold and valiant band which was notorious for its “B. J.-ness.” (B. J., before June, means freshness.)