SPARRING FOR TIME
The roads were muddy from the heavy rain that had fallen over night, but
Mollie demurred when the girls suggested that they walk to the station
rather than go in the automobile.
"It may be all very well for you," she declared, "but I certainly don't
feel in any mood for taking a two-mile walk this morning."
"Well, my knees do feel kind of weak and wobbly," agreed Amy plaintively.
"But you know how reckless you are, Mollie, and on these wet roads we're
very apt to skid."
"Well, but what's one skid more or less in a good cause?" interrupted
Betty merrily. "Besides, I guess we wouldn't have time to walk, anyway,"
she added quickly, as dozens of soldiers began pouring from their
barracks. "We'll never be able to get to the station before the boys
unless we take the car."
"Girls, they're really going," wailed Amy, as they quickly got into their
wraps.
"Certainly looks like it," said Grace grimly, for once not knowing or
caring whether the becoming little hat was tilted at exactly the right
angle or not. "It makes me feel all queer and--wobbly inside."
"Better take some candy along," advised Mollie, with a weak attempt at
raillery as they ran down the porch steps and piled into the car. "You
won't be able to come out of it alive if you're not properly fortified,
Gracie."
"Oh, that reminds me," cried Betty, springing from her seat and from the
car at the risk of her neck, for the machine had already begun to move.
"We forgot the chocolate and tobacco for the boys. Wait for me, Mollie."
But Mollie, who had already brought the car to a standstill with a jerk
and a grinding of brakes, leapt out after her, and the two flew up the
steps, taking two at a time, and into the house.
Left behind, Amy and Grace looked at each other.
"I wish I could move like that," sighed the latter. "Those two get things
done while I'm just beginning to think about it."
"And here they come back again," marveled Amy.
"Yes we have, and it's just about time, too," panted Betty, as they
scrambled into the machine. "The boys are coming from the main gate now,
and we'll have to make things hum if we want to get there before them."
"As Frank would remark," agreed Mollie: "'You said it!' This is going to
be the race of a lifetime,"
"But Mollie," said Amy, gripping both hands tight in her lap as the car
swerved sharply and executed a magnificent skid on two wheels, "you know
it won't do either the boys or us any good if we get killed on the way. Do
be--"
"Amy Blackford," cried Mollie in an ominous tone of voice, "if you say
that word to me again I will run into a tree or something just for spite!"
Amy gave a plaintive little moan, and her two hands gripped tighter in her
lap.
"All right," she said. "I'm glad I made my will a couple of days ago."
Grace turned an interested and speculative eye upon her.
"Oh, you did," she remarked, adding in a wheedling tone, "What did you
leave me, dear? You know I always was your best friend."
"Goodness, I wonder who's my worst then," retorted Amy, with an unexpected
flash of humor.
"Oof, that was a bad one, Gracie," Betty laughed, glad of any diversion
to keep the vision of those splendid, marching boys in the background as
long as possible.
Unconsciously the girls were sparring for time. They knew that once they
let themselves think, that once they let themselves realize the full
significance, the utter finality of this thing that was about to happen,
it would be hard for them to smile. And they so wanted to smile!
They had been so glad, so proud when the boys had volunteered among the
very first. Down in their hearts they had known that that was the only
thing they could have done.
And the thought of their going away had seemed so far in the future that,
as yet, it need not worry them. Blinded by their own passionate
patriotism, they had seen all of the glory of war and none of its horror.
And now, in order to send the boys away with the thought of bright faces
and encouraging smiles to cheer them on their long, grim journey, the
girls joked and laughed, carefully avoiding the subject that was uppermost
in their minds.
"Oh, well, that's all a person can expect in this world," Grace had
answered resignedly, in reply to Amy's thrust. "Just be kind and loving
and thoughtful of other people's comfort, and you're sure to be sat
upon--"
"Goodness, she doesn't think anything of herself, does she?" Mollie flung
back over her shoulder. "Now see what you made me do!" the exclamation was
fairly jerked from her as the car lurched into a deep rut at the side of
the road, skidded for a minute, seemingly uncertain whether to fling them
out on the bank or continue its way, then bumped up on the road again and
continued its flight.
"Oh, Mollie, do be--" Amy began, but a sudden grim straightening of
Mollie's back warned her in time and with a gasp she choked back the
forbidden word.
"Goodness, isn't she well trained?" laughed Betty, as Mollie bent once
more over the wheel.
"Who wouldn't be," protested Amy plaintively, "if a cannibal should come
and hang an axe over his head--?"
"Is she calling me names?" demanded Mollie ferociously, half turning in
her seat. "If she is, please tell her to say it to my face."
"Well, I would if I could," cried poor Amy desperately. "But I'd have to
be an acrobat--or an idiot--"
"The last ought to be easy," drawled Grace, then hastily offered her
candy. "I didn't mean it, Amy dear," she retracted humbly. "Really I
didn't."
"Don't you believe her," said Betty whimsically. "She only wants to find
out what you left in your will, Amy."
"I wouldn't dare tell her now, anyway," returned Amy, with a twinkle.
"Methinks it might very easily become my death warrant."
"How so?" queried Mollie with interest--or perhaps it might be said,
Mollie's back expressed interest. For Mollie's back could express, Grace
had once said, "more emotions in a minute than most people's faces could
in a year." And, riding as they so often did, in full view of that
expressive back, the girls had come to interpret its owner's emotions
correctly in nine cases out of ten. So now they were able to detect a very
quickened interest.
"Why," Amy explained naively, "it's barely possible that I've left
something to Mollie, too, isn't it?"
"Barely," agreed Mollie dryly.
"Well," Amy chuckled, "then what would be easier than for Mollie to
precipitate an accident, dash my brains out against some convenient tree,
and then brazenly protest all innocence in the murder."
"Nothing," said Mollie, with the same dryness of intonation, "except the
bare possibility of dashing my own brains out in the transaction."
"Oh, well, it could be fixed," said Amy with confidence.
"Do you really think so?" Mollie's back once more betrayed a lively
interest, and the girls chuckled. "Suppose you tell me about it."
"And sign my own death warrant?" returned Amy plaintively. "Goodness, you
must think I'm foolisher than I am."
"Impossible," retorted Mollie and once more Amy sighed and folded her
hands resignedly in her lap.
"All right," she threatened, "if we only live through this, I'll change my
will, that's all, and leave everything to Betty and Mrs. Sanderson."
"Goodness, what have I done?" cried Grace in dismay. "Didn't I just offer
you another candy and--and--everything"
"I didn't notice the everything," said Amy.
"Well, you noticed the candy," retorted Grace with spirit, "and it was the
fattest, juiciest one in the box, too."
"Well, give it back, Amy," directed Mollie, and Amy, in the act of
swallowing the fat juicy chocolate, choked on a chuckle.
"Too late," she cried. "It is decapitated."
"I thought I heard its death rattle," sighed Grace, mournfully adding, as
the girls laughed at her: "Oh, I don't know what's the matter with me
this morning. I never felt so foolish before.
"Girls," she said, and suddenly her voice quivered and her eyes filled,
"I've tried so not to think of it, but I can't fight it off much longer.
Will and I have always been such chums, played and worked and
even--quarreled--together--"
"Please don't, Gracie," cried Betty, her face flushing and her eyes
growing dark and wide. "It would be so easy just to g-give way, but we're
in the service, too, you know, and we must be at least as b-brave as the
boys."
"I--I guess maybe that's impossible," said Mollie, her voice, even her
straight little back betraying emotion. "Nobody could be as b-brave as
they are."
"Well, we never know what we can do till we try, do we?" cried Betty, that
indomitable fighting spirit of hers rising to the emergency. "If we say we
can't, of course we can't, but we can do our best, can't we? If the boys
aren't c-crying, why should we?"
"That's the way to talk," cried Mollie, straightening defiantly at the
challenge. "We don't have to, and, what's more, we won't!"