"I wish I could carry myself and step the way that fellow does,"
whispered Dick, his admiring gaze following the retreating
orderly.

"Well, that's what we've come here to learn," replied Greg. "That
is, if we get by the doctors--and then the beastly academic grind."

Now, to keep his mind occupied, Dick Prescott fell to observing,
covertly, the other candidates.

These were of all sorts and sizes. They represented all parts of the
United States and every walk in social life. Out of the group were
two or three who, judging by their clothing, might have been sons
of washerwomen. There were other youngsters whose general
appearance and bearing seemed to proclaim that they came from
homes of wealth. But the majority of the young men appeared to
have come from the same walk in life as did Dick and Greg.

Our two young friends were by no means the most smartly nor the
most correctly attired young men there. On their way to New York
Prescott and Holmes had discovered, by taking mental notes of the
other male passengers on the train, that these two Gridley boys had
missed something from the most correct styles then prevailing in
the larger cities.

Dick and Greg were both solidly and substantially attired, yet there
was an indefinable something about them which proclaimed them
to be young men from one of the smaller cities of the United
States.