"So Captain Holmes will call me down before a lot of officers,
will he? He'll order me to show more 'pep,' will he, the
slave-driver? And if I don't he'll break me, eh?"

"Breaking" a non-commissioned officer is securing his reduction
to the grade of private.

"The captain is so lazy himself that he doesn't know a good man
when he sees one," Mock told himself angrily.

Then he added, threateningly to himself:

"He'd better not try it. If he does, he'll sure wish he hadn't.
Since this war began even the officers are only on probation, and
I've brains enough to find a way to put him in bad with the
regimental K.O."

"What's the matter, Mock, don't you like your food?" asked the
sergeant seated at his left. "You're scowling something fierce."

"It isn't the chow," Sergeant Mock retorted gruffly.

"Must be the heat, then---or a call-down," observed his brother
sergeant.

"Never you mind!" retorted Mock. "And I'm not talking much now;
I want to think."

"Must have been a real 'cussing-out' that you got," grinned the