Sleepy snookers are shivering on the parade-ground

Boys. By Lady Barker, author of “Travelling about” “Holiday stories” etc. 1874. P.93

As it is the depth of winter and bitterly cold, this prospect does not send the “last-joined” to bed in very high spirits, and they openly wish that their respective relatives, including Jones’s gouty old grandfather, had to attend both parade and drill instead of themselves. However, there is no help for it, and by six the sleepy snookers are shivering on the parade-ground. Strange to say, no one else is there, and after a long period of wandering disconsolately up and down, stamping about, and unlimited grumbling, a voice from an upper window sings out, “It’s all right, snookers, I’ll let you off this time,” and they recognize in their ferocious and hard-to-please inspector of the preceding evening our friend Frank, who had got himself up so faultlessly for the part, that he would have deceived much more experienced cadets than our poor dear “last-joined.”