"But, of course, I know that you can't." "No, mother; I'll have time to walk up and down the home streets two or three times, and then orders will come from the Navy Department to report aboard the ship to which I'm to be assigned.

Mother, if you want to keep a boy at home you shouldn't allow him to go to a place where he's taught that nothing on earth matters but the Navy!" Later in the afternoon the train pulled in at Baltimore.

It was nearing dusk when the train pulled out of Philadelphia on its way further north.
Yet the passage of time and the speeding of country past the ear windows was barely noticed by the Gridley delegation.

There was too much to talk about---too many plans to form for the next two or three weeks of blissful leave before duty must commence again.
Here we will take leave of our young midshipmen for the present, though we shall encounter them again as they toil on upward through their careers.
We have watched Dave and Dan from their early teens.

We met them first in the pages of the _"Grammar School Boys' Series."_ We know what we know of them back in the days when they attended the Central Grammar School and studied under that veteran of teachers, "Old Dut," as he was affectionately known.
We saw them with the same chums, of Dick & Co., when that famous sextette of schoolboys entered High School.