Very much in this way did the "custom" strike Connell and Pops. What with roll-calls, recitations, riding, and the brisk evening drills and parade, Geordie had no time to think of anything beyond his duties. But Connell said that Jennings had been over talking to some of his former class-mates, who were old stagers in Company D, and who were doing a good deal of talking now among themselves about the impropriety of appointing as their first sergeant a fellow from the right wing of the battalion who was not imbued with the time-honored tenets and traditions of the left-flank company. First Class men, said they, had always enjoyed certain privileges, as became gentlemen of their high standing, who were to become officers in less than a year, and one day it was decided they should sound Connell as to what his views might be, and the result was not at all to their liking. Connell couldn't be made to see that, because they were speedily to don the army blue, they should meantime be allowed to discredit the cadet gray.
"There's no reason that I can see," said Connell, "why First Class men shouldn't be just as soldierly in ranks as other cadets, and every reason why they should."
Then a B Company committee of two informally dropped in on Pops with a similar query, and got almost the same answer. Whereupon the committee said that the class had taken counsel together on the subject. They courted no trouble whatever, but simply gave Graham to understand that it wasn't "customary" to hold a First Class man in the ranks to the same rigid performance of the manual and the same precise carriage that would be exacted of a plebe. Neither could they be held to strict account in such trivial affairs as falling in for roll-call with coats unbuttoned or collars awry or belts twisted, or for other little matters of the kind, and any reports given them for such would be "regarded as personal." Whereupon they took their leave, and Geordie met Con with a broad Scotch grin on his face.
"Jennings is at the bottom of it all," said Connell. "He wants them, however, to start the move over in D Company, because he can't initiate anything of the kind under Bend. You understand."
"Well, to my thinking, and according to the way I was brought up," said Geordie, "such specimens should be court-martialled and dismissed the service. Men who have no higher idea of duty than that are not fit to be officers in the army."