"Now, maybe, we'll never have a chance to catch him," added Mollie.

"Oh, we'll catch him yet," declared Betty,

Under ordinary circ.u.mstances the Outdoor Girls would have given the incident considerable attention. But now their thoughts were of the soldier boys so soon to leave.

"Didn't the boys say they were entraining for Philadelphia?" asked Grace, trying hard to make her voice sound natural and merely conversational.

"Yes, that's where a great many of them go," Betty answered, praying desperately that she might fight down that flood of tears that every moment threatened to rise and overwhelm her. "I _won't_ be weak and f-foolish," she was saying, over and over, to herself. "I won't, I won't, I won't!"

Then the car came to a standstill beside the platform and the girls sat looking at each other, not quite sure what to do next.

"Do you think it would be all right to stay here?" asked Mollie uncertainly. "Of course we could get out when the boys came."

"It's a little conspicuous, don't you think?" suggested Amy mildly.

"Yes, it looks as if we had come to see a parade or something," Grace agreed.

There was a great deal of luggage and many boxes piled at one end of the station and it was upon these that Betty's eyes, roaming in search of some sheltered spot, finally focused.

"We could slip in behind those packing cases and things," she suggested; "and then we could see without being too much seen ourselves."

"Then the boys might not see us," protested Mollie, clenching her teeth over her trembling lip. "We don't want them to think we weren't here to say g-good-bye."

"Well, they'll see the car, won't they?" Betty argued, a little impatiently, for even her sweet temper was beginning to give way under the strain. "They'll know by that that we're here and then if they miss us, they deserve to--that's all."

"Well, I suppose we'll have to take a chance," said Molly, almost crossly, as she jumped out after Betty. "I only wish it was all over. The waiting is getting on my nerves."

"Well, you don't think you're alone in that, do you?" Grace was beginning when Betty interrupted with a little hysterical laugh.

"I--I don't see how it's going to make us feel very much better to quarrel about it," she said, adding whimsically: "Come ahead you two--kiss and make up before the boys come. You know they always said it made them jealous enough to commit murder when we did it in their presence."

They laughed unsteadily, and Mollie threw an affectionate and repentant arm about the Little Captain's shoulders.

"Betty, dear, you make me ashamed of myself," she said impulsively. "As if you didn't have enough to worry about yourself without my making you more.

I'm a selfish pig, that's all."

Just then the sound that they had all been unconsciously listening for struck heavily upon their ears. The regular tramp, tramp of hundreds, thousands, of marching feet!

"Oh, they're coming, they're coming!" cried Amy, in a sort of suffocated little moan.

"Well, of course they're coming," retorted Mollie, her nerves jumping with the effort to speak coolly. "We've been almost expecting that they would, haven't we?"

"Oh, I know. But it all seemed like a terrible d-dream till now," returned Amy, looking so like a bewildered child that Betty put a comforting arm about her and drew her into the little recess beside her.

"It isn't a dream, Amy dear," she said, very steadily. "I don't think we were ever more fully or terribly awake than we are now. Not even that day when we heard of the sinking of the _Lusitania_, did we realize just what this war was going to mean to us. It's only by some sacrifice--some personal sacrifice--" but the brave voice broke and died into silence while she listened with almost straining intensity to that regular beat of marching feet, coming nearer, ever nearer--

And in the distance came the long, warning whistle of the train--the train that was going to take them away!

"Oh, keep still," cried Mollie, turning with sudden, unreasoning fury toward the oncoming locomotive with the smudge of smoke in its wake, her hands clenched pa.s.sionately and her black eyes smoldering. "We know you're coming for them--Roy and Allen and Will and Frank and--and--all the others. But that's no reason why you have to rub it in, is it?"

At any other time, the rather unreasoning attack upon the train would have seemed funny to the girls, and even in their trouble a faint gleam of humor came to them, but no one laughed, no one even smiled.

"I--I wonder," said Grace, nervously patting a stray lock of hair into place beneath the smart little hat which, under the spell of excitement, had gotten slightly awry, "if we'll be able to pick our boys out from all that crowd. Oh, girls," taking a quick little survey over the top of her own particular packing case, "they're almost here! Swarms, just swarms of them!"

"Goodness, that sounds like locusts--or mosquitoes," cried Betty hysterically, scarcely knowing what she was saying. "Squeeze in tight, Amy, or you'll get your toes stepped on. Grace, look again. How far away are they?"

"Just around the corner," reported Grace. "Goodness," she cried in sudden panic, "I almost wish we'd stayed in the automobile. I'd feel s-safer--"

"Safer?" cried Mollie scornfully, "I'd like to know what there is to be afraid of. Oh, there you go again," shaking an impotent little fist as the great train rumbled into the station with a screaming of brakes and a shrieking of whistles.

And then the flood broke. Down the station platform came hundreds upon hundreds of khaki-clad figures, talking, gesticulating, faces eagerly flushed, eyes brilliant as they prophetically looked into the future.

"Oh, we'll never be able to pick them out of the crowd," cried Grace despairingly. "I'm getting cross-eyed as it is. Oh, there's Corporal Harris! Yes, and there goes James McDonald! Oh, oh--"

And indeed there were scores of familiar faces among the boys that were pa.s.sing perhaps forever out of their lives. Some saw the girls and saluted them gaily, but most of them were too intent upon boarding the train and embarking upon the glorious adventure with as little delay as possible to look either to the right or the left.

Then, just as the girls thought they must have missed "their own particular four" and were bracing themselves to stand the disappointment, they saw them!

They were together, the four of them, splendid specimens of young manhood with their cropped heads and service hats and packs slung over their backs.

"Allen," cried Betty impulsively, and he turned as though shot, a deep flush staining his face.

They came over then, those four, to the girls they were leaving indefinitely--perhaps forever. Their young faces were very grave, their jaws grim and set, and the girls realized suddenly that these were not the boys who had so joyously left Deepdale in the service of their country.

These were no longer careless, irresponsible boys, but men with a great and glorious duty to perform, and their hearts thrilled with a new pride.

And while eloquent things were being said, not only with lips, but with eyes and clasping hands, Allen bent nearer to Betty's little, upturned face.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT MAY BE A LONG TIME, BUT--I'M COMING BACK." _The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House. page 145_]

"It may be a long, long time, little girl," he whispered, gravely, "but--I'm coming back. And, Betty, I have your picture--that little snapshot you gave me, the laughing one, you remember?"

Betty nodded, smiling bravely while she choked back something deep down in her throat.

"And--" his eyes had grown very wistful, "and--I'm counting on some letters from you, Betty?"

"Oh, Allen," she cried breathlessly, "I'll write you all the time, dear, every day--"

But he had caught both her hands in his and was drawing her irresistibly toward him.

"'Dear,'" he was repeating dizzily, incredulously. "Did you call me that, Betty? Did you say 'dear'?"

"Y-yes," she nodded, breathless, a little frightened, yet adorably brave.

Why, this was Allen, and he was going away! He might be killed over there!

She might never see him again! "And," she added, looking up into his eyes with a shy recklessness, "I--I'd say it again, Allen, if you asked me--"

With a little cry he drew her to him, and for one unbelievable, breathless second his lips rested on hers.

"Betty, Betty, I love you," he whispered unsteadily. "I'll be dreaming of you always. Whatever I do 'over there' will be because of you--" The whistle shrieked a rude warning and his hands tightened on hers. They were both trembling a little.