The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House Part 11

Grace eyed her pityingly.

"Wouldn't I look nice," she demanded, "lugging a candy box along to a bayonet drill?"

"I think you'd probably be exceedingly popular," Betty broke in, with a chuckle. "You'd have all the boys around you in earnest."

"And then what would Roy say?" teased Amy. "He'd never speak to poor Grace again."

"Poor Grace, indeed!" sniffed the owner of the name scornfully. "I'd just like to have anybody try to 'poor Grace' me! He'd never do it a second time."

"Goodness, don't look so ferocious, Gracie," Mollie soothed her. "Some one give her another candy--do."

"I'm not a cripple," Grace retorted, evidently in a belligerent mood.

"I've always been quite able to help myself."

"So we've noticed," murmured Mollie irrepressibly.

"Will you two please listen to reason?" queried Betty, in her primmest tones.

"Yes, grandma," replied Mollie soberly--which was so ridiculous that even Betty dimpled. "What have we done now?"

"Nothing. It's what you may do," Betty answered, adding, in an explanatory tone: "You see, we are just about to enter the sacred precincts of the drill ground, and it is fitting that we do so with an air of propriety and sobriety."

"Goodness, is she insulting us?" cried Mollie, in mock indignation. "I'll have you know, Miss Nelson, that I, for one, am not intoxicated and, what is more, never expect to be."

"Goodness! that is a relief," sighed Grace, who had been hanging breathlessly on her words. "I thought you were going to say 'I am not drunk, but soon shall be,' or words to that effect--"

"But will you listen?" cried Betty despairingly. "I've got about as much chance of saying anything sensible--"

"As the man in the moon," finished Grace innocently, then, meeting Betty's outraged eye, added hastily: "Oh, wasn't that what you were going to say?"

"No, it wasn't," Betty was beginning, when Mollie, for the first time in her life played the part of peacemaker.

"Go ahead, honey," she interrupted soothingly. "We're all ears."

"Speak for yourself," Grace murmured.

But this time Betty would not yield, and insisted upon being heard.

"Please listen a minute, girls," she begged. "You know we've got a reputation, deserved or not, of being respectable--"

"Oh, what a mistake," interpolated Mollie.

"I said it might be a mistake," Betty continued patiently, although her eyes twinkled. "Anyway, we've got to live up to it--Goodness! just look at the boys. I guess the whole camp must be in the drill."

"Yes, I guess Sergeant Mullins was right when he said it was to be an exhibition drill," agreed Mollie, all fun temporarily swallowed up in a very real admiration of the spectacle before them.

"It's no wonder that Sergeant Mullins is considered a very important personage around here," added Amy.

"Oh, look!" cried Grace, as they sat down upon a convenient bench.

"They've started. Oh, girls, I'm glad I came!"

Mutely the girls echoed the sentiment, and for the next hour they sat motionless, eyes and attention glued upon the magnificent spectacle of a thousand men, running, advancing, retreating, attacking, all in obedience to one great plan.

They forgot it was only a sham attack, an imitation battle, an exhibition drill. For the moment a curtain had been lifted and they were permitted to see something of the glory, the pa.s.sion, the horror of democracy's struggle against the armed autocracy of the world.

When it was over they sighed and came back to the present almost with a shock; so greatly had they been engrossed in the scene.

"Well, Sergeant Mullins may not be much of a talker," were Mollie's first words as they rose to go back, "but he certainly knows how to act!"

"It was wonderful!" breathed Betty, her eyes gleaming. "Just think what it must be to be a man in these times! To be able to fight for one's country!"

"Well, I don't know," said Amy, with a little shudder. "That part of it's all right. But when it comes to being maimed and crippled for life it isn't so much fun."

"Oh, Amy, don't!" cried Grace, clapping her hands to her ears, while Betty continued spiritedly:

"I didn't say it was fun," she cried. "Naturally the boys have to take into consideration the possibility of all that you said, Amy. But there's no glory in the world like giving yourself for a great cause--"

"Hear, hear!" came a masculine voice in applause, and they turned to find Allen and Frank close behind them.

"Well, what will you have?" asked Mollie, eyeing them hostilely. "We thought you were lost and gone forever like Clementine--"

"And were quite reconciled," finished Betty primly, her eyes twinkling.

"Oh, you did, did you?" cried Frank, regarding Mollie's haughtily tip-tilt little nose with mingled fear and admiration. "Well, I'll have you know, young lady, that you can't get rid of us as easily as all that. May I be permitted to walk beside you, mam'selle?"

Mollie sighed and permitted the liberty with an air of great resignation.

In the meanwhile, Allen was whispering into Betty's almost reluctant little ear.

"Did you really mean what you said about its being glorious to give yourself for a great cause?" he asked softly.

"Why, I--g-guess so," she stammered, taken off her guard. "Why?"

"Oh, just because," he answered vaguely, watching the elusive little dimple at the corner of her mouth, "I might want to remind you of it--some day."

CHAPTER X

ALARMING SYMPTOMS

The girls awoke one morning several days later--days of routine duty at the Hostess House--with the delightful sensation of something good impending. Crowded as they were in the one big room for Mrs. Sanderson's accommodation, they had formed the habit of talking over their prospective fun before the actual work and hurry and bustle of the day began.

So it was this morning, just after the sun had streamed in through the two big east windows and settled on the tip of Betty's upturned little nose in a most provocative manner.

Sleepily she rubbed a hand across her face, then sneezed.