"Pile in, fellows!" he said. "We'll just about make it before the storm."

Then, while the boys obeyed, scrambling in any way, and Betty and Grace squeezed themselves into the front seat, Sergeant Mullins leaned over and said, very quietly:

"Thank you."

CHAPTER XIV

THE REINS TIGHTEN

"A week!" sighed Betty. "Oh, Mollie dear, a week's such a very little time!"

"Goodness, it isn't even that now," Mollie returned, dropping a st.i.tch in the sweater she was making and not even noticing it--an almost unheard of procedure. "That is," she added, with a slight little flicker of hope, "if you're sure you heard the major aright, Betty. Mightn't he have been speaking of something else?"

"Well, I told you what he said," answered Betty, a trifle impatiently, for she also had dropped a st.i.tch and saw before her the weary process of ripping out two whole rows of her helmet--and helmets were such mean things to make, anyway!

"When he spoke of a week," she added, ripping vindictively, "and then said that the boys would be glad the waiting was over, it seems to me there's just about one conclusion we can come to."

"Oh, all right, but you needn't be so cross about it," returned Mollie, who, being very cross herself, could not make allowance for the malady in any one else.

"Have you seen any of the boys lately?" she asked, after an interval of deep concentration. "We've been kept so busy here at the Hostess House lately with these other boys that our boys might as well be dead and buried for all I've seen of them."

"Who's talking about being dead and buried?" demanded a third voice, and they turned to see Grace in the doorway with the inevitable candy box under her arm.

"Can't you choose a more cheerful subject?" she added, coming in and seating herself luxuriously in a big chair. "There's enough of that being done anyway--"

"You talk as if getting dead and buried were some sort of new indoor sport," interrupted Mollie, glad to have this old familiar enemy to spar with.

"Goodness, there's no more sport in anything," returned Grace, disconsolately. "I don't see why any old swell-headed German--"

"Grace!" exclaimed Betty, but with twinkling eyes. "What language!"

"Oh, I could do lots better than that," returned Grace tranquilly, "if I weren't in polite society."

"You flatter us," murmured Mollie.

"I know it," Grace retorted, still calmly. "Anyway, I was remarking that I didn't see why any swell-headed old German was allowed to take the world by the ears and turn it upside down--"

"Gee, who's allowing him?" cried a masculine voice from the door, and the girls turned with a chorus of greetings to welcome Roy.

"We were just saying we thought you were dead," remarked Mollie somberly, never lifting her eyes from the sweater as he seated himself beside her.

"Sorry to disappoint you," he replied cheerfully. "As Frank remarked unflatteringly this morning, 'You are far from being a dead one--go and reform.'"

"Was he speaking of me?" demanded Mollie Billette in deadly quiet, but Roy raised a placating hand.

"No, no, of course not," he said hurriedly. "He was speaking of me, poor worm that I am. But, I say," he added, looking around at the busily flying needles, "what's the idea of the knitting. We've got more sweaters and things than we know what to do with now."

Mollie lifted her eyes long enough to give him a withering glance.

"Do you think you're the only ones we care about?"

"I hope so," he responded promptly and daringly.

"Do you think maybe we'd better leave, Betty?" inquired Grace with delicately lifted eyebrows, while Mollie flushed scarlet.

"If you do, I'll never speak to you again," cried the latter, in alarm, adding, to change the subject: "Where are the other boys, Roy? You usually travel in fours."

"Well, as long as you didn't say on all fours, it's all right," responded Roy in a weak attempt at a joke that focused three pairs of girlish eyes scornfully upon him.

"Roy!" they chorused.

"All right, don't shoot," he pleaded. "What was that you asked me, Mollie?"

"I asked you," returned Mollie, with deliberation, "where the other boys were."

"I don't know, and what's more I don't care," replied Roy independently, leaning back and crossing his long legs with a sigh of content. "We've all been trying to get leave to come over and see you girls, and so far I'm the only one who's succeeded. The old boy, that is, the colonel," he corrected himself, gravely saluting the imaginary officer, "is drawing the reins pretty tight these days. Looks," he added, striving to keep the excitement out of his voice, "pretty much like business."

"Like business," they repeated in chorus, and were about to follow it up with a shower of questions when there was the sound of more masculine voices in the hall and the missing members of the quartette precipitated themselves upon the a.s.sembled company. Roy looked disgusted--the girls happy.

"So you thought you'd have the field all to yourself, did you?" Allen demanded of the disconsolate Roy. "Well, that's the time you counted your chickens too soon."

Then, turning to Betty, he caught her two hands in his and waltzed her exuberantly about the room.

"Betty, Betty," he cried, his voice keen, his eyes shining with excitement, "we've got special permission to tell you, because you're in the service. We're going, little girl! We're on our way to lick the tar out of those Huns!"

"Allen!" Betty's face went suddenly white and she sank down on the arm of a chair, regarding him with wide, dark eyes. The other three boys with Mollie and Grace were gathered in the opposite corner of the room, chattering like magpies.

"It's--it's really come?" she demanded, unsteadily. "Oh, Allen, when?"

"Day after to-morrow," he replied, his own hands shaking a little as they closed over hers. "Are you going to congratulate me, Betty?"

"A--of course," she answered, smiling at him with a bravery that made him long to gather her in his arms and comfort her. She looked so little and plucky and utterly adorable.

"Then do it," he said whimsically, putting his hands behind him to keep them out of temptation.

"C-congratulations," she stammered, then her lip trembled and she bit it to keep it steady. "I know how much you've been wanting it," she continued, striving for a matter-of-fact tone, "and so, of c-course, I'm glad for your sake. Only--"

"Only?" he prompted, gripping his hands hard to make them behave.

"Only," she added, her voice scarcely above a whisper, and glancing up at him shyly, "I can't very well help missing you, Allen, just at first--"

"Betty," he cried, his hands breaking away from their imprisonment and seeking hers fiercely, "I'm trying so hard to do the right thing,--be honorable and all that--wait till I come back, you know--but I can't.

It--it isn't human nature. You're too wonderful--too utterly--"