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 stitch 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 stitch 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 assembled 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--"
"Allen, don't!" she cried breathlessly. "You forget we're not alone."
"I--don't--care--" he was beginning headily, but she wrenched her hands
free, and, eluding him, plunged into the excited group at the other end of
the room.
"Hello, Betty," Mollie cried, her voice high with excitement. "I guess you
were right after all--only it's five whole days sooner than we expected."
"I--I wish they'd stop the old war," sighed Amy, who had come in in time
to share the wonderful news. "I just can't bear the thought of it."
"Gee, that would be a nice note," broke in Will boyishly. "After all these
weeks of training, to have the war stop just as we got ready to have a
hand in it!"
"We'll be lucky if we don't leave a couple of hands in it," said Roy,
again trying to be witty and again finding himself the battery for a score
of indignant glances.
"If you think that's funny," Grace was beginning when Betty, color high,
heart still beating suffocatingly from that brief little battle with
Allen and her own inclination, interceded in his behalf.
"Oh, do leave him alone," she cried, patting Roy's scorned shoulder
soothingly. "I, for one, would forgive him for anything he said or did
just now without even being asked."
Roy gave her a grateful glance and Allen whispered close in her ear.
"You can be kind to every one but the one who loves you, Betty. Is that
it?"
His voice was so low that no one but Betty could hear. And Betty felt an
added rush of color sting her cheeks, and turned her eyes away to hide the
confusion, the sudden fright in them.
If they had been alone no one knows what might have happened. But, even as
it was, Allen, watching the flaming color and the downcast eyes, felt his
heart leap joyfully and was almost--almost--satisfied.