The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House Part 3

"Oh, no, we mustn't," agreed Amy in alarm. "She'd be just as apt as anything to put on her hat and leave us without a word."

"You know, it is going to be rather close quarters," sighed Grace, as they turned to leave the room. "We won't be able to move without falling over somebody's feet."

"You needn't look at mine," Mollie retorted with spirit. "Why is it that whenever you make a disparaging remark you never fail to look at me?"

"That's easy," Grace returned with a twinkle. "All you have to do is to look in your mirror--"

"Oh dear, and I suggested it," mourned Betty, as they descended the stairs arm in arm. "We'll have to give them the cots, Amy; it would be murderous to let those two sleep together."

"Ah, 'tis a deep, dark plot," cried Mollie, staggering dramatically and almost falling downstairs. "I see it all--they get the bed while we, poor wretches that we are, toss our uneasy bones upon the cot--"

Amy screamed and Grace covered her ears.

"Goodness, what do you think this is--a ghost's retreat?" demanded the latter, while Betty chuckled joyfully. "'Toss our uneasy bones,' indeed!"

"Does sound kind of grizzly, doesn't it?" Mollie admitted. "Just the same, I wager that's what Betty intended."

"Mollie, you wrong me!" cried Betty in dismay. "I was simply trying to avoid a tragedy. But, if you're going to toss bones, anyway, you might as well do it in comfort; so--"

"Oh, you goose," cried Mollie affectionately, and in this manner they entered the den where Mrs. Watson was entertaining, or being entertained by, the little old woman.

The girls immediately took possession of the latter and joyfully escorted her to the upper floor to look over her new quarters.

"My, isn't this fine!" exclaimed the guest, her face lighting up happily.

"A beautiful big bed and three fine windows to see the soldier boys from.

Are you sure," she added, glancing from one to the other of the four eager faces suspiciously, "that I'm not putting you out? Because, if I am--"

"Why of course you're not," Betty fibbed stoutly, adding, with a swift change of subject: "But I'm sure now that you would like to rest. Look,"

she added, with quick solicitude, as she saw how white the old lady had become, "your hands are trembling--"

"No, no, no," disclaimed the little old woman impatiently, as she gazed with set face out of the window that faced upon the parade. "I'm a little cold. And--that boy--" She pointed with quivering finger at a st.u.r.dy, khaki-clad figure, swinging happily over the parade in the direction of the mess-hall, "He--he reminded me--"

"Yes," they cried, crowding about her solicitously, while Betty pushed a chair toward the window and gently forced her into it.

"He--he was--just like--" The slight form was shaking and the words forced themselves from between her chattering teeth, "what my Willie boy would have been now--if he hadn't--run away. My little son! My baby!"

CHAPTER IV

MRS. SANDERSON'S STORY

Tears were not only in her eyes now, but running down her wrinkled old face, and the girls, with the tears of real pity in their own eyes, crowded closer about her.

"Would it help," Betty suggested gently, "if you told us about it?"

The old lady drew her gaze from the window and let it rest on the sweet, sympathetic young face, and she nodded slowly.

"I guess maybe it would," she agreed, taking a handkerchief from the pocket in her dress and wiping her eyes. "You see, I never have told anybody for years and years, and if it hadn't been for this war I suppose I should have gone right on not telling anybody for the rest of my life.

Of course the Yates and Baldwins and all the folks that lived around us knew it, so there was no use telling them--" Her voice trailed off and her eyes sought the window with its vista of parade ground and low, roughly built barracks buildings.

The girls looked at her. Never in their lives, they thought, had they been so thoroughly interested in anything as they were in the secret sorrow of this gentle old lady, the sorrow that brought that strange cloud of unhappiness every time she mentioned this son of hers who had run away.

"He must have been a pretty ungrateful sort," thought Mollie resentfully, "to have run away from a mother who loved him like that."

Once more the old lady drew her eyes from the window and fixed them on the circle of eager young faces.

"I suppose young things like you couldn't be expected to understand," she went on, "and yet perhaps you'll be interested more than other folks, 'count of your having met so many young boys."

"Oh, we are interested," they cried in chorus, at which the old woman's face lighted up and she went on with more cheerfulness.

"Well, to begin with," she said, "we lived way at t'other end o' the world. Danestown, it was called, and my husband--better man never breathed--died when my little boy was only four years old. I wasn't so young any more, for Willie was the youngest--the others had all died when they was babies--and Willie's pa and me was getting along in years when he come to us--the dearest, sweetest, prettiest baby you ever set your eyes on.

"Well, we had managed to save some little money, though 'twasn't over much at best, and with me workin' on the farm week days and Sundays, we managed to get along pretty well. An' I was savin' pennies--" Here the old voice trembled and nearly broke, so that it was some minutes before the speaker could go on.

The girls tried hard to think of something to say, but as everything that came to them sounded flat and inappropriate, they kept a sympathetic silence--which was perhaps the best they could have done, after all.

"As I was sayin'," the old voice continued after a while, "I was squeezin'

every little penny I could from the bare necessities to lay aside for the boy. You see, it had been his father's wish that Willie should be given the chance neither of us had ever had to get some schoolin' and have his chance in the world. I was hopin' that by the time the boy grew up I might maybe have enough to send him to college.

"Of course," she added, with an air of apologizing for a weakness that went straight to the girls' hearts, "they was only dreams. But I don't see as there was any harm in them, seein's I always kept them to myself an'

never told anybody 'bout them--leastways, no one but Willie.

"Sometimes, on a winter night when the snow was fallin' outside an' the wind was howlin' round the house, I used to draw Willie up to the big, open fireplace we had in the kitchen and tell him 'bout his pa an' how he had always wished for Willie to be a fine, big man.

"An' Willie, he'd listen with those big, earnest eyes o' his--such beautiful eyes my Willie had--" Again the voice broke and trailed off into silence while the girls sat and waited as before, only with a stronger pity in their hearts for this faithful little old woman who had loved so well--and lost.

"An' then," the voice continued, more softly and dreamily than before, my little boy would reach up and pat my cheek, just like his father used to do, and seems like I can hear his voice now, just as plain as I did all those long, long years ago.

"'Maw,' he'd say, drawlin' a little in his cunnin' way, 'just don't you worry. I'll do all those things, jest like pa said, an' then we'll go an'

live in a big house an' you won't have to work so hard any more--jest be happy.'

"An' then he'd take my hand that was coa.r.s.e an' rough from workin' in the field and rub his soft little cheek against it an' look up at me, an'

just smile--"

There was a little sob from the spot where Amy was sitting cross-legged on the floor, while the other girls were frankly and openly crying and not even noticing it.

"He--he must have been a darling!" cried Betty, unsteadily.

"He was," answered the old lady simply. "It wasn't very long after that he ran away, and I suppose"--again her eyes sought the parade ground--"if I was to meet him now I maybe wouldn't know him. You see, I'd still be lookin' for my little brown-eyed, yellow-haired Willie boy."

"But what made him run away?" asked Mollie, rubbing her eyes furiously with her handkerchief. "I shouldn't have thought--"

"Neither would I," the strange little woman interrupted abruptly. "If he hadn't had such a high spirit he never would. But--well, seem like I'm gettin' ahead of my story.

"You see, some o' the neighbors' children was a pretty wild lot an' they always had a grudge against my boy 'cause he wouldn't join them in all their escapades.