The morning dawned gloriously bright, and at the first ray of the sun the girls were up and dressed and ready for the fun of the day.
"I don't know what I'll do if our trunks don't come," worried Amy, as she took a rather creased white skirt and waist from her suitcase. "I brought only one change and a bathing suit."
"Well, as long as you brought the bathing suit, it's all right," returned Mollie, sticking one last pin in her hair. "I intend to live in mine to-day."
"And, anyway, we can't possibly expect the trunks till this afternoon," put in Grace; "so I don't see any use in worrying about them now."
"If they don't come to-day, either Mollie or I will go down to the station and see about them," offered Betty, who was looking as sweet and fresh as the morning itself. "We'll probably have to go down and get them anyway, since we expressed them through by train and came by motor ourselves."
"Oh, well, who cares," cried Mollie, stretchingher arms above her head and breathing deep of the salt-laden air. "When we get down on that wonderful beach, that looks too good to be true, we'll be away from all the rest of the world and we won't need any clothes but a bathing suit."
"Mother's up," cried Grace, as they stepped out into the hall and smelled the welcome aroma of coffee. "I thought I heard somebody go downstairs a little while ago."
"But we shouldn't have let her get the breakfast," cried Betty. "We brought her up here for a rest, not to wait on us."
"She probably didn't sleep very well," said Grace, thinking of Will. "It really isn't any wonder."
However, Mrs. Ford greeted the girls with a bright smile when they entered the kitchen, and when they remonstrated with her for getting up so early she merely laughed at them.
"Why, I haven't cooked for so long, it's just fun for me," she said lightly, but Grace's loving eyes saw how pale she looked and how sad her eyes were when she was not smiling.
"Game little mother," she whispered to herself.
However, after they had cleared the remains of a remarkably good breakfast away, they asked Mrs. Ford to put on her own bathing suit and take a dip with them.
After a minute's hesitation she agreed, and they ran upstairs eagerly to get ready. They all had black suits, and all but Grace wore snug-fitting rubber caps, designed more for use than looks. Grace wore a rakish little Scottish cap affair that was immensely becoming but not at all comfortable to swim in.
"How do I look?" she demanded complacently, when she turned from a prolonged survey of herself in the mirror and pirouetted slowly before them.
"Beautiful, but foolish," Mollie commented succinctly.
"Do you really expect to swim in it, dear?" asked Amy mildly.
"The effect would be altogether stunning," suggested Betty judicially, her head on one side, "if you cocked it just a little further over one eye so as to obscure the sight completely."
There was a ripple of laughter.
"Oh, you're all jealous," remarked Grace, not at all disturbed as she turned back to the mirror once more to pull a curl a little more fetchingly over her ear. "I might have known you would be."
"Goodness, anybody would think she was at Palm Beach or some other show place," cried Mollie, pulling her own plain little cap a triflelower over her ears. "If you expect an audience, Gracie, I'm afraid you will be disappointed."
"Here I am, trying to give you something good to look at—"
But they would hear no more and hustled her with scant ceremony away from the mirror and out of the door.
"Come on!" cried Betty, taking the stairs two at a time. "Let's see who gets to the water first. I'm betting nine to one on myself."
"Goodness, she's as conceited as you are, Gracie," gasped Mollie, following hard on Betty's footsteps. "Here's my chance to take some of it out of her!"
Grace and Amy, following at not quite such breakneck speed, came out on the porch in time to see two slender, black-clad figures with vivid red and green caps scrambling down the side of the bluff that led to the beach.
As they started after them Mrs. Ford joined them and they ran together to the edge of the bluff. The slope was not quite so gentle as they had thought on the night before, and Mollie and Betty were puffing considerably when they reached the bottom—which they did at almost the same minute.
Then, fleet-footed, they sped across the sand toward the inviting water beyond, while Mrs.Ford, Grace, and Amy clambered down the bluff in their turn.
At the bottom they turned, saw Betty and Mollie reach the water's edge at the same instant—or so it seemed to them—and dash into the green depths. A moment more and the two black figures were lost to sight and only two vivid caps bobbed on the surface of the water.
"Do you suppose it's quite safe?" asked Mrs. Ford. "I wish the girls hadn't been in such a hurry."
"Oh you needn't worry about them," Grace assured her. "Betty and Mollie are regular fish in the water, and you know there aren't any mean currents around here. The beach slopes gradually down so that they can't get caught in water holes either, so don't worry, Mother," and she slipped an affectionate hand into her mother's and received an answering smile in return.
And, oh, how good that water did feel!
As they waded into it up to their waists, Mollie and Betty came swimming back, shaking the water from their eyes and cleaving the big combers with long, powerful strokes.
"Well, who won?" Amy challenged them, as they came within shouting distance.
"Tell the truth," added Grace.
"Both of us," yelled Mollie.
"Or neither," Betty answered, getting to her feet and walking the rest of the way in toward them. "We couldn't have done better team work if we had tried. Oh, isn't it glorious?"
"We don't know yet—we're not even all wet," returned Mollie, adding, as a great comber came rushing toward them: "Come on, Gracie, here's a good one. Let's get under it."
And "get under it" they did, cleaving the water prettily, and in another minute were up on the other side of the big wave. They shook the water from their eyes and struck out merrily.
"Don't go too far," Mrs. Ford called after them, and two bare gleaming arms waved back at her.
The hours that followed were just one long delight, and the girls looked surprised and a little abused when Mrs. Ford reluctantly called them in.
"Why, it can't be more than eleven," protested Grace.
"And we haven't seen the water for, oh, ages," added Mollie.
"Please, can't we have half an hour more?" Amy added.
Mrs. Ford looked smilingly from one to the other and then at Betty.
"Well, haven't you any petition to make?" she asked of the latter.
"I was thinking," said Betty squinting up at the sun, "that Grace was wrong when she said it wasn't more than eleven. It seems to me to be after twelve."
"It is," said Mrs. Ford firmly. "Quarter past."
"Well, let's go!" cried Betty, starting toward the bluff. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm starving to death."
"But we'll want to swim again after lunch, won't we?" protested Mollie.
"Of course."
"Well, then," she argued reasonably, "we don't want to change our clothes just for lunch, and we can't very well go up to the house in dripping bathing suits."
The girls groaned.
"Then we'll have to wait for lunch until we've sat here for hours and dried off," wailed Grace.
"And she hasn't even a box of chocolates!" Betty mocked her. "It is a desperate case, Grace."
With another groan Grace sank into the soft, warm sand while the others followed suit, looking so mournful that Mrs. Ford was moved to take pity on them.
"I dried off long ago," she said, adding, as they looked at her hopefully: "I tell you what I'll do. I'll go up and open a couple of cans of tongue and make some sandwiches and bring down the cakewe bought yesterday. And we can have some milk to drink, for I had the boy leave a couple of extra quarts this morning. How will that do?"
"Do!" the girls echoed, while Grace hugged her mother with vigor. The eyes of the girls followed her gratefully as Mrs. Ford started off on her work of rescue—at least, that is the way the hungry girls regarded it.
"You know, I have a better appetite than I've had in weeks," announced Mollie, as she dug her toes into the warm sand. "I haven't been eating much lately."
"I hadn't noticed it," commented Grace dryly.
"Well, mother did," returned Mollie spiritedly. "She said she was glad I was going away because she thought the change would do me good. I really should have stayed at home, I suppose, and helped mother take care of the twins," she added thoughtfully. "I never saw two children with such an absolute genius for getting into mischief. But when they're caught, they're so cunning and dear and say such quaint things that it is almost impossible to get angry with them."
"They're adorable," agreed Betty, while all the girls smiled fondly at thought of the twins.
"Just the same," remarked Grace, "although I love them, I'm glad I'm not their sister, for I'dnever be able to eat a candy in comfort," and the girls laughed at her.
"It seems so wonderful and peaceful here," said Amy, after a short pause, "and we seem so awfully far away from the rest of the world. It almost makes one believe that the war 'over there' is a dream—"
"Or a nightmare," interpolated Mollie.
"Well, it isn't," said Grace, adding, as she dug her toes more deeply into the yielding sand: "And if we don't hear more news of Will pretty soon, I'll just die, that's all. I can't stand it!"
"There's your mother," cried Betty suddenly, glad of an excuse to change the subject. "I think she's calling us, too. Come on, let's go."
Nothing loath, they got to their feet, shook the sand from their suits, and hurried to the bluff where Mrs. Ford stood awaiting them.
As they clambered up toward her they noticed that she looked excited and was holding a yellow envelope in her hand.
"The trunks have come," she said, as they ran up to her. "A big lumbering red-haired fellow brought them from the station a few minutes ago. He also brought this," indicating the envelope in her hand.
"What is it?" they cried, a strange premonition of evil tightening about their hearts.
"A telegram for Mollie!"
Mollie turned a little pale under her tan and took the yellow envelope gingerly, as though it had been poisoned, or contained some T. N. T. explosive.
"Who on earth—" she began, then interrupted herself, and with trembling fingers tore the envelope open. The girls watched her, wide-eyed and tense.
"It's from mother," she cried, then crushed the paper in her hands and looked around at the sympathetic faces with eyes grown dark with fear. "Girls," she said, "I—I'm afraid to read it—I—"
Betty put a steadying arm about Mollie and asked gently:
"Would it make it any easier if I were to read it, dear?"
"No, oh, no!" cried Mollie, then smoothed out the crushed paper and read the telegram through while her face grew whiter and her lips closed in a tense line. With a queer little sound in her throat she turned away and handed it to Betty.
"Read it," she commanded in a choked voice.
Mrs. Ford put an arm about Mollie while Betty read aloud and the girls crowded closer.
It was a brief, paralyzing message the telegram contained.
"Twins are gone. Were not home last night, and am wild with anxiety. No need your coming home. Am doing everything possible to find them.Mother."
"Twins are gone. Were not home last night, and am wild with anxiety. No need your coming home. Am doing everything possible to find them.Mother."
"The twins!" gasped Amy.
"Gone!" added Grace, stupefied. "Oh, Betty, are you sure you read it aright?"
For answer, Betty handed her the telegram and turned to comfort Mollie, who was sobbing bitterly.
"I knew I shouldn't have gone away," she was saying over and over again. "I knew I should have stayed at home."
"But your staying at home probably wouldn't have made any difference," argued Betty soothingly.
"And by this time they may have been found, anyway," added Mrs. Ford, gently leading Mollie toward the house, Betty at her side, while Grace and Amy followed, mute with sympathy.
"Yes; or by this time they may be dead!" sobbed Mollie, refusing to be comforted. "They must have met with some accident or they wouldn't have stayed away all n-night."
"Maybe they ran away," suggested Grace, trying hard to think of something cheering to say. "They've done it before, you know."
"Yes," agreed Mollie, sinking into a porch chair and searching desperately for a handkerchief in her pocketless bathing suit. "But they always came home before night. I know it must be something awfully serious to keep them away over night."
Mrs. Ford was very much worried and disturbed, but she nevertheless managed a bright smile.
"As you say, they probably ran away," she said. "Only this time they have wandered too far and haven't been able to find their way back. But if your mother has notified the police, as she surely has by this time, they are sure to be found. And now," she added, rising briskly and making for the door, "since everything seems a good deal worse than it is on an empty stomach, I'm going to give you some lunch and we'll decide what to do afterward."
Left alone, the girls gazed helplessly at each other. Mollie had stopped sobbing and was staring moodily out at the ocean, her eyes and nose swollen with weeping.
"I'll have to go home, of course," she said suddenly, breaking a silence filled with unhappy thoughts. "I don't know that I'll be any good, but I can at least comfort mother. I'm sorry," she gave them a wistful, apologetic little glance that went straight to their hearts and brought the tears to their eyes, "to break up the party."
"You darling," cried Betty, trying to laugh and not making a very great success of it, "do you think we care a rap about our old party? Only," she added thoughtfully, "as you say yourself, Idon't see that you can do very much good by going home."
"I could comfort mother," repeated Mollie, in a flat tone, as though she were repeating a lesson.
"But she said not to come," suggested Grace. "She said she was doing everything possible—"
"I know," interrupted Mollie, wearily. "Of course she would say not to come. And I suppose," she added, dabbing impatiently at her eyes, "all I'd do would be to weep anyway, and make things about ten times worse."
"Do you want your lunch inside or out here?" Mrs. Ford asked from the doorway and the girls jumped to their feet.
"Here we are, letting you do all the work again," cried Betty self-reproachfully. "I guess we'd rather have it out here, but we'll bring it out ourselves. Please go over there, get into the swing, and don't stir until we say you may." Betty had a pretty manner, half of deference, half ofcamaraderie, with older people that made them love her. Mrs. Ford patted her cheek with a little smile and obeyed her command while the three girls ran into the kitchen to bring out the sandwiches and cake that she had already prepared.
And all the time Mollie sat motionless, staring out over the ocean, apparently unconscious of everything that was going on around her.
"Little Dodo and Paul," she said over and over to herself. "What has happened to them? Oh, I must go home, I must!"
"Come to your lunch," called Betty.
After lunch Mollie began to take a less gloomy view of the situation and hope, which in youth can never long be forced into the background, began to revive.
"In the first place," Betty argued, as she began to clear away the dishes and Amy rose to help her, "it couldn't have been an accident, or your mother would have read about it in the papers. The children are old enough to tell their names and where they live."
"I know," said Mollie, while the troublesome tears welled to her eyes again. "But it's possible they may have been unconscious, and then they wouldn't be able to tell anything."
"But there would have been at least an announcement describing the children," Amy argued in support of Betty.
"And, anyway, pretty nearly everybody in Deepdale knows the twins," Grace added.
"Well, then, there are only two or three things left that might have happened," said Mollie, her lips quivering. "It's barely possible they may have wandered off into the woods and gotten lost. In that case somebody will have to hurry up andfind them or they will just stay there and s-starve! And that's almost worse than being run over."
"Well, with everybody in Deepdale, civilians as well as police, searching for them," said Betty confidently, "I don't think there is very much chance of their starving to death. If that's the solution, I shouldn't wonder but that they are safe at home now with everybody rejoicing."
Mollie's face brightened a little at this picture, but almost immediately clouded over again.
"But we don't know that," she said. "And until we do, I'm not going to let myself get too happy."
"I wonder," she said suddenly, after the girls had cleared away the lunch and had perched themselves on the porch railing, "just what I ought to do first. Send a telegram to mother, I suppose," answering her own question.
"Yes, I think I would," said Betty, adding, as Mollie got up with characteristic impulsiveness and started for the house: "Do you mind telling us what you are going to say in it—about going home, I mean?"
Mollie paused uncertainly.
"I—I don't just know," she admitted. "One minute I think there's no question but what I ought to go, and the next, I wonder if I wouldn't only be in the way."
"There's another thing to consider," Mrs. Ford put in. "It is almost a certainty that the children will be found in a day or two, perhaps are found already, and in that case you would have all your trip for nothing. I don't like to advise—"
"Oh, please do," Mollie begged, adding with a pathetic little smile: "I feel so awfully lonesome, trying to decide everything all by myself."
"You poor little girl," said the woman tenderly, then fearing lest sympathy would only make the girl feel worse, added hurriedly: "In that case I should most strongly advise that you wait a day or two at least and give things a chance to straighten out. At the end of that time, if they haven't been found and you still think you ought to go, we'll pack up everything and go along with you, of course."
"That's what I'll do then," agreed Mollie, relieved to have the question settled for her. "And now," she added, making for the door once more, "I'm going to get into my street things and wiz down to that station in record time. Who wants to come with me?"
It seemed everybody did, and in a very short time the girls had changed from their bathing suits to their street clothes and were ready for the dash to the station, which was about two miles from their house.
They all climbed into Mollie's car, and the big machine started slowly backward down the steep incline.
"Better hold on," Mollie warned them. "I've never done quite so steep a hill as this backward, and the old boy may balk. Take your time, old man," addressing the car, as it showed a tendency to pick up speed too rapidly. "Of course we're in a hurry, but we don't want to land on our ears. That's the way—gently now. All right—we're off!" as they reached the foot of the hill in safety and swung around into the road. "Now let's see how long it will take you to reach that station."
As a matter of fact, it took scarcely any time at all, for the demon of speed seemed to have taken possession of Mollie, and she drove so recklessly that even the girls, who were used to her daring, were startled.
Yet something about the young driver's straight little back and tightly compressed lips kept them from protesting.
However, the wild ride came to an end without accident, and the girls tumbled out of the machine and on to the station platform. They looked about them, but the only person in sight was an unpromising looking person with a bald head—though he could not have been over thirty-five—beaked nose, and small red-rimmed eyes.
This decidedly unattractive individual lounged against the door of the waiting room and eyed the girls with insolent admiration.
"Anything I can do for you?" he asked, as he saw that they hesitated. "Always willing to oblige the ladies," he added.
The girls exchanged a glance, then Betty approached the lounger who had the grace to straighten up as she addressed him.
"We want to send a telegram," she explained coldly. "We understood we could send one from here."
"Sure! That's me," he responded with alacrity. "Right this way, ladies."
The girls followed him reluctantly into a little square booth-like place, and Mollie scribbled a telegram on the blank he gave her. Then they hurried out to the machine again. A little way down the road Amy turned and looked back. The fellow had resumed his lounging position and was looking after them with his little red-rimmed eyes.
"Ugh! wasn't he awful?" said Betty, as Mollie rounded a turn in the road on two wheels. "I'm glad we don't have to see him often, he'd give me the nightmare."
But Mollie did not answer. Her mind was once more on the twins, and she was repeating over and over the same old question.
"What has happened—what has happened? What could have happened?"
"Betty," she said aloud, so suddenly that Betty started, "there's just one thing we didn't think of as being a solution. It's strange, too, for it is the most probable solution of all."
"What?" asked Betty anxiously.
"Suppose—" said Mollie, her voice so low that Betty had to bend forward to catch the words. "Suppose they have been kidnapped!"
"Well, we've got to do something. There's no use sitting around looking at each other!"
The girls started and looked reproachfully at Mollie.
It was several days after the telegram had come which had so upset them and their plans, and they were sitting dejectedly on the sand at the foot of the bluff trying to read. The attempt had proved a failure, however, and one after another the books had dropped to their laps while they stared disconsolately out over the water.
"What would you suggest?" asked Grace listlessly, in response to Mollie's statement.
"Can't we go in swimming again?" asked Amy mildly.
"No!" Mollie was very positive. "The boy will be coming with the provisions and letters in a little while, and there may be a telegram or something from mother. If there isn't pretty soon, I'll go mad."
"Let's take a walk then," suggested Betty.
But again Mollie would have none of it.
"Too warm," she said.
"Well, I thought you were the one who wanted to do something," said Grace, getting up and shaking the sand from her dress. "I guess the trouble is," she added, "that you don't know what you want."
"Yes I do," said Mollie, while the tears rose to her eyes and she shook them away impatiently. "Only the one thing I want more than anything else I can't get."
"Maybe you forget," said Grace, while her own voice trembled a little, "that I'm very nearly in the same fix."
"No, we don't," cried Betty quickly. "But the only way we can hope to bear the horrible things that are happening to us is to get busy at something and try to occupy our minds."
"It's all very well for you to talk," Mollie retorted, in her nervous state saying something she never would have thought of saying under normal conditions, "but nothing terrible has happened to you yet. Wait till it does. Then maybe it won't be so easy to get your mind off it."
The thoughtless speech stung, and Betty turned away to hide the hurt in her eyes.
"Perhaps you're right," she said quietly. "Nothing very terrible has happened to me yet,personally. But perhaps you forget that we girls always share each other's troubles—"
But Mollie would not let her finish. She was down on her knees beside her chum, penitent arms about her shoulders and was pouring out an apology.
"I ought to be tarred and feathered," she cried breathlessly. "I don't know what made me say such a thing, Honey."
"I know," said Betty gently, "and that's why it didn't go very deep—what you said."
"You're a darling!" cried Mollie. She gave the Little Captain another bear's hug, then sat down in the sand again with her arms clasped about her knees. "It's this everlasting uncertainty and the feeling of helplessness that gets on one's nerves so. I always did hate to wait for anything—especially with my imagination."
"What's that got to do with it?" asked Amy, surprised.
"Why, it—the imagination, I mean—just goes running around in circles, thinking up all the horrible things that might have happened until I almost go crazy. If I only didn't have to think!"
"You never used to have any trouble that way," said Grace, with a weak attempt at a joke that ended in dismal failure.
"Isn't that the boy with the mail?" asked Bettyafter a minute, as the rumble of an antiquated vehicle and a masculine voice addressing in no uncertain tones a pair of invisible mules came to their ears. "Perhaps he's bringing good news to us. Come on, we'll meet him half way."
Relieved at the prospect of action, the girls sprang to their feet, dusted off the clinging sand, and scrambled up the bluff. A minute more and they were running down the hill pell mell toward the oncoming team.
They had scarcely reached the bottom of the hill when the long-eared and long-suffering animals rounded a turn in the road and ambled slowly toward them.
The driver, the same gauky, red-headed country lad who had brought them their trunks, drew rein as the fleet-footed girls reached him and swept off his crownless hat with a gallantry that left nothing to be desired.
"I'm bringing your provisions," he began, adding loquaciously, for he loved to talk and seldom got the opportunity: "Sorry I couldn't get 'em to you yesterday, but Abe up to the store took sick and he says to me, 'Jake,' he says, 'guess mebbe you'll have to be storekeeper an' delivery boy both to-day. Shake a leg,' he says, 'an' I might mebbe give you a dollar extry. You never can't tell,' he says. He's that generous like, Abe is," the boyshook his head sadly at the thought of Abe's generosity, "that he'd give a whole chicken to a kid dyin' of hunger, pervided he knowed the chicken had the pip."
The girls chuckled at this last sentence, uttered with a sort of ferocious sarcasm, even though they had been standing on one foot with impatience during the rest of his long speech.
Now, seeing that he was about to begin again, Betty cut in quickly.
"It didn't bother us a bit, you're not coming yesterday," she said, adding, as she leaned forward eagerly: "What we do want to know is—did you bring any mail?"
"Sure," he said, good-naturedly, reaching behind him for a small package of letters which Betty took eagerly. "An' there was a telegram too, came yesterday—"
"Yesterday!" Mollie interrupted with a groan. "And I'm just getting it to-day!"
"But I was telling you," he started all over again patiently, "as how Abe took sick and says to me: 'Jake—'"
"Yes, yes, we know," interrupted Mollie, reaching impatiently for the crumpled yellow envelope which he took from his pocket, smoothed out carefully, and handed to her with maddening deliberation. "Oh, if anything terrible has happened I'll never forgive myself for not going to the station yesterday!"
"But it was raining so hard, and we expected the boy any minute." Amy thus tried to console her but it is doubtful if Mollie even heard her. She had torn open the envelope and was devouring the message whole while the girls looked at her anxiously.
The red-headed orator, seeing that his presence was no longer in demand, clucked to his team and jogged off reluctantly. A telegram is rather a rarity in Bluff Point and they might have taken pity on a fellow and given him at least a hint of its contents. But there, he didn't want to know anyway—wouldn't if he could! Still, these out-landers were mighty mean, close-mouthed folks!
"Nothing," said Mollie, in response to the unspoken question of the girls. "They haven't found a trace of either of them yet, but the police are confident that it is a case of kidnapping and that they will be able to round up the criminals in a short time. Poor little Dodo! Poor little Paul! If nothing worse happens to them they will be scared to death. Oh, if I could only get hold of those kidnappers I'd—I'd kill 'em!" She clenched her hands passionately and her lips shut in a straight, grim little line.
"I guess we'd all be glad to," said mild littleAmy, with a look in her eyes that showed she meant it.
As they started back down the road Betty suddenly remembered the packet of letters in her hands. The excitement about the telegram had put them completely out of her mind.
"To think I could forget letters!" she marveled, as she distributed them to their rightful owners. "Here's one for you, Amy, and two for you, Grace. One for Mrs. Ford and one for Mollie and—and—two for me—"
She looked so surprised that they paused in the act of opening their own letters to look at her.
"What's the matter?" Grace asked.
"Why here's one addressed to me in a perfectly strange hand," she answered, turning the letter over and over in her hand. "I can't imagine—"
"What's the postmark?" asked Amy.
Betty looked and then colored prettily as she realized who her unknown correspondent was.
"Why—why," she stammered, amazed at her own confusion, "it's sent from Bensington, but—"
"Bensington!" Grace echoed, then her eyes twinkled as the truth came to her. "So it's as bad as that, is it?"
"I don't know what you mean," said Betty, trying to look dignified and failing utterly, while Mollie and Amy continued to stare their amazement. They had forgotten completely that night spent under the hospitable roof of Mrs. Barnes, and even her son's engaging personality had faded from their minds. There had been so many things to think about and worry about. So now they both said together:
"What in the world are you two talking of?"
"Do you mean to say you really don't know?" queried Grace in a superior tone. "Have you so soon forgotten our knight of the wayside, Joe Barnes?"
"Joe Barnes," they repeated weakly, then turned their astonished gaze on Betty.
"Well, I can't help it," retorted Betty, feeling vaguely the need of defense. "I didn't ask him to."
"But how did he get your address?" asked Mollie, still staring. "Who gave it to him?"
"I told him where we were going," cried Betty desperately, driven into a corner. "But I had no idea he was going to write to me until—until—" hesitating as a picture of Joe Barnes, standing beside her car and asking if he might tell her "how things were with him" came vividly before her eyes.
"Yes. Until?" they baited her, forgetting for a moment the dark shadows hanging over them in the fun of this unexpected discovery.
"Until the morning we came away," Betty answered, seeing that she could not get away from these pitiless inquisitors until she had satisfied their curiosity.
"Did he ask to write to you then?" probed Mollie relentlessly.
"I don't see what right—" Betty was beginning spiritedly when she caught Mollie's eye and ended in a little helpless laugh. "I suppose I'll have to tell you all about it or you'll turn a simple little molehill into a mountain."
"Quite right," said Grace cheerfully, and even Betty had to laugh at her.
"Make a clean breast of it," ordered Mollie.
"But there really isn't anything to make a clean breast of," protested Betty. "He simply asked me if he might write and tell me how he—how he—"
"How he what?" they queried.
"But I don't know whether I ought to tell you about that or not." Betty was really in earnest. "You see, what he told me was sort of in confidence."
"In confidence!" repeated Grace, adding wickedly: "Now we know it's a serious case."
"Nonsense," said Betty, almost crossly. "He simply said he hadn't been allowed to get into the army because of ill health, but now that he feltwell again he was going to try once more. It was that he wanted to write and tell me about. And because I was really interested, I said he might. That's all."
"How romantic!" cried Mollie irrepressibly. "For goodness sake, hurry up and read it, Betty, and relieve our curiosity."
"I'll read it," said Betty firmly, "when I get good and ready, and not one minute before!"
They walked the rest of the distance to the house in absorbed silence, reading as they went. Then suddenly Betty gave a little cry of amazement.
"I thought this was for me," she said, holding up a letter. "But it isn't. It's for your mother, Grace. I don't see how I could have made such a mistake!"
But Grace only heard the first part of Betty's speech. The last of it passed right over her head.
"A letter for mother?" she cried. "Oh, give it to me, Betty. It may be from dad. Oh, it is! It is!" she exclaimed, as she saw her father's familiar writing. "He must have heard about Will. Mother! Mother—" she broke away from the girls and took the porch steps two at a time, waving the letter wildly as she went.
"Oh, if it's only good news, if it's only good news!" Betty found herself saying over and over again as she, with Mollie, followed Grace into the house.
They found Mrs. Ford in the living room, pale and trembling a little, holding the envelope in her hand as though she dared not open it. Grace had collapsed in a chair and was gazing up at her mother with such agonized pleading in her eyes that the girls could not look at her.
Then very slowly Mrs. Ford tore open the envelope. At the same moment the girls seemed to sense that they might be in some manner intruding, and with one accord they moved over to the window and stood looking out.
After a wait that seemed interminable they heard Grace say in a strained, far-away little voice:
"Mother, what is it? Can't you tell me? I think I'll die if I have to wait any longer."
"Read it," they heard Mrs. Ford say in a choked voice, as a rustle of paper told that she had handed the letter to Grace. "I can't tell you dear. Oh, my boy, my boy!" And she sank down in a chair and covered her face with her hands.
The girls turned from the window and started to leave the room, for they felt that the moment was too sacred for even them who were so intensely interested, to share.
Just as they reached the door they paused, arrested by a cry from Grace.
"Seriously wounded!" she read in a muffled voice. "Oh, Mother, for all we know, that may mean Will is—dead!"
They were startled by a muffled sob, and turned in time to see Amy rush from the room. Poor little Amy! In the excitement and grief of the moment they had forgotten that she might also be affected by this news of Will!
Betty and Mollie ran upstairs after her, leaving Grace and her mother together.
"And I was so hoping," said Betty as she closed the door softly and Mollie flung herself on the bed, "that it would be good news."
"Yes," said Mollie, staring moodily out the window, "it does seem that everything terrible that can happen to us is happening all at once. I wonder what's next."
"There isn't going to be any next," said Betty, but in her heart she was not so sure. Almost everyone in the world was suffering, one way or another, and it was only to be expected that they would get their full share.
And as she thought of Allen a hot wave of fear went over her, leaving her faint and sick. Out there in the very thickest of the fight, it would be a miracle if he should be saved to come back to her.
But he must come back, hemustcome back,her heart cried over and over again. Hadn't he said he would? And Allen always kept his word.
Then she shook herself, and with an effort brought her wandering thought back to this new trouble—or rather, confirmation of an old one.
From the timeMrs.Ford had received the telegram telling of Will's wound, they had hoped against hope that it had been a mistake, or that at least, the wound had not been serious.
But this new report from Washington seemed to put an end to that hope, and there was nothing to do but to face the terrible reality. Will was seriously wounded in some hospital in France, and, as Grace had said, that might mean that even now he was in a critical condition, perhaps, for all they knew, he had died out there away from all his dear ones and the friends that loved him.
"I don't suppose there is any use acting as though he were dead already," said Mollie, breaking in upon her unhappy reverie. "There have been several thousand wounded soldiers over there who have recovered."
"Yes, only to be sent back again to the firing line and have it done all over," said Betty bitterly, for, for a time at least, her staunch optimism had deserted her and she was ready to see the blackest side of everything.
"Yes, it does seem that once a soldier has gone down to the very gates of death, he should be exempted," sighed Mollie, adding dispiritedly: "But I suppose if they made that a rule they wouldn't have any armies left after awhile."
"And the boys themselves don't want to be exempted," said Betty, feeling a little thrill of pride in spite of her heartache. "Their one biggest reason for getting well is to be able to get another 'whack at the Hun.'"
"Shall we go and see if we can cheer up Amy?" she asked after an interval filled with gloomy meditation. "She is so brave and quiet about everything that you never have a chance to guess how hard she is taking her trouble. Poor girl!"
"I do feel awfully sorry for her," agreed Mollie, shifting unhappily, "but I must say I don't feel very capable of cheering anybody up myself. I never felt so horribly discouraged in my life."
"Well, it doesn't do any good to think about it," said Betty. "Maybe if we try to make poor Amy feel better we'll help ourselves at the same time."
"I suppose it won't do any harm to try," agreed Mollie, rising wearily. "But I wish somebody would lend me a smile for a little while till I get mine back again. I might be able to play the role of merry little sunshine better."
She gave Betty a wry little smile, and arm in arm they started down the hall to Amy's room.
The found the door shut, and tapped lightly upon it. When there was no response they rapped again, then tried the knob and found the door was locked.
"Whatever in the world—" Mollie was beginning apprehensively, when a plaintive voice in the room behind the closed door interrupted her.
"Who is it?"
"It's we, Dear—Mollie and Betty," answered Betty quickly. "Can't you let us in?"
"I—I'd rather not," replied the voice falteringly. "I'm all right, and I'll be out in a minute. Please don't worry about me. You ought to be used to my making a goose of myself by this time." This last accompanied by a pitiful little attempt at a laugh.
"All right, Honey," Betty spoke sympathetically, for she had often seen the time when even her best friend would have been in the way. "We only wanted to help, that's all. When you want us we'll be in my room."
Amy murmured something in reply, and they slipped back again into the other room and closed the door.
"I guess she feels it even worse than we thoughtshe did," said Mollie pityingly. "When Amy cries she is pretty well cut up."
"Well, I guess all we can do now is just sit still and wait till somebody wants us," said Betty, sitting down irresolutely and folding her hands. It was this last action that reminded her of the letter from Joe Barnes which she had not yet read. Although she had been holding it in her hand all the while, she had completely forgotten there was such a person as the writer.
At her exclamation Mollie looked up rather listlessly.
"That's so," she said. "You never did find out whether or not Joe Barnes had been accepted. Tell me about it. I'd welcome a diversion—a cyclone or a tidal wave or anything—if it would only get my mind off our troubles."
"I'll guarantee it would be effective," returned Betty absently, as she took up the closely written pages. "It would be like burning yourself to make you forget you have a toothache."
There was silence for a long while, broken only by the sound of the waves breaking on the shore and the crackling of the paper as Betty turned page after page.
It was a long letter, filled with youthful enthusiasm. In it the youth spoke his pleasure in meeting her and his hope that she would not onlyanswer this letter but would allow him to write to her often.
But over and above all the great fact stood out that he had been accepted! The doctors had looked him over and declared him fit in every respect to serve his country.
As Betty read the last glowing sentence a sob broke from her and she buried her head in her arms. Mollie went over to her quickly.
"What is it?" she asked anxiously, putting an arm about the Little Captain. "You haven't had bad news too, have you, Betty?"
"N-no," sobbed Betty, raising eyes that were shining through her tears. "I just love them so—all those splendid boys that are so crazy to give their lives for their country, that my heart gets too full sometimes, that's all."
"Then I take it that Joe Barnes has been accepted," Mollie rather stated than asked.
"Yes," said Betty, feeling for a handkerchief. "And he is simply wild with joy, Mollie," she added, while the color flooded her face. "The Germans simply can't last long with that spirit against them. It makes our boys indomitable!"
Betty woke up the next morning with a sense of deadly depression weighing her down. For a few moments she lay staring up at the ceiling trying to collect her thoughts. Then the events of the day before came back to her and she frowned unhappily.
The whereabouts of poor little Dodo and Paul was still a mystery, and Will Ford, whom she had come to regard almost as a brother, was terribly wounded somewhere in France. She probably would never see him again.
And there was Allen too, to worry about every minute of the day and night. She had not heard from him in—oh, ages. Yes, it must be every bit of two weeks since she had read his last letter. For all she knew, he might be worse off than poor Will.
"Oh, well," she sighed, and, turning on her side, looked out of the window.
There was no relief there from the gloom of her thoughts, for the sky was leaden and overcast,looking as if it, too, were mourning for the troubles of the world, and the surf beat loud and threateningly on the shore.
"Guess it's going to rain and make things still more cheerful," she said, and at the sound Grace opened heavy eyes and turned over restlessly.
"What are you mumbling about?" she asked sleepily, closing her eyes again and sighing a little.
"Nothing but the weather," replied Betty, adding, with unusual gentleness: "It's early, so you can turn over and get forty winks."
"What has happened to you?" asked Grace, opening her eyes again in surprise at this unheard of advice. Then as the full force of her trouble came home to her she turned over noisily and burrowed her head into the pillow.
"Guess I will," she said in a muffled voice. "Don't any one dare wake me up till they have some good news to tell me. I'm going to be another Rip Van Winkle."
"Goodness, I hope it won't be that long before we have any good news," said Betty, trying to speak lightly. This would never do, she thought. They simply had to find some way out of this terrible slough of despondency before it mastered them completely.
"I'm going to get up," she announced briskly,jumping out of bed. "I've got to find something to keep me busy till that good news of ours feels like coming along. I'm getting absolutely morbid just sitting around and thinking."
"Well, what is there to do?" asked Grace, rolling over and regarding her listlessly.
"There's the house to be put in order," Betty pointed out, recovering a little of her old spirits, now that she had decided on a definite plan of action. "And we never have really unpacked our trunks because Mollie has been undecided about staying."
"Yes, I know. And my clothes are a perfect wreck. I haven't a thing to put on that doesn't look as if it had been through the wars," Grace agreed. "Not that it really matters," she added indifferently.
"Of course it makes a difference," returned Betty sharply. She was determined to rouse Grace out of her lethargy, no matter what means she had to take. "Don't you know that when you are dressed neatly and becomingly everything seems brighter and more hopeful? And, anyway," she added, watching Grace out of the corner of her eye, "it isn't like you to be careless about your dress."
"Well, it isn't like me either to go moping around as if I had one foot in the grave and theother was slipping," retorted Grace, with a spirit that showed the experiment had worked. "I don't think it's nice for you to make remarks like that when you know how I'm feeling and the excuse I have."
"Nobody has any excuse for giving up and acting as if everything were lost when it isn't," said Betty decidedly. "If our soldiers did that the first time they had to retreat, how long do you suppose our army would last?"
"But Will isn't your brother," insisted Grace stubbornly. "If he were, maybe you would feel differently."
There was a moment's pause.
"No he isn't my brother," returned Betty, knowing she was going to hurt her friend but believing that the result would justify the means. "But if he were I would try to behave so that when he came back he would have a right to be proud of me."
"Betty Nelson!" Grace sprang out of bed with her eyes blazing, "do you know what you are saying? Do you mean that if Will should come back, he wouldn't be proud of me?"
"Not if you keep on taking your trouble lying down," said Betty, sticking gamely to her guns, though she was a little frightened at the success of her experiment.
"I may," she thought to herself, "have done not wisely, but too well."
However, after one outraged and enraged stare at Betty, Grace pointedly turned her back and began hastily to pull on her clothes. She finished dressing before Betty, and without a word left the room.
"Now you have done it, Betty, my dear," said Betty making a little face at her pretty reflection in the mirror. "I shouldn't wonder if Grace would never speak to you again. Poor Gracie, perhaps I shouldn't have said what I did, but I simply had to start something."
On her way downstairs she tapped at Mollie's door and found that she and Amy were both up and dressing.
"Come in," called Mollie; "I need your help. Amy's eyes are so swollen," she explained, as Betty obeyed, "that she can't see to do me up. Just the middle one, Betty. That's a dear."
As Betty obligingly did the "middle one" she stole a glance at Amy, who was absently doing up her hair without looking in the mirror.
"Look out!" she cried suddenly, making both the girls jump. "You nearly stuck that hairpin in your eye, Amy," she explained, as they looked at her reproachfully, "and that isn't the place for it you know."
Amy smiled a crooked little smile and put the unruly hairpin in the right place.
"I'm apt to do anything to-day," she said, with a sigh that seemed to come from her toes. "If any of you want to live, you had just better keep out of my way, that's all."
"Isn't it just wonderful weather?" said Mollie sarcastically, gazing out at the leaden landscape. "Just the kind of a day to put the J into Joy."
"If something doesn't happen pretty soon," put in Amy, with another deep sigh, "I'll just naturally pass away. I wonder," she added, looking really interested in the subject, "if anybody ever did die of the blues."
"I don't believe so—but there's always hope," said Betty dryly, adding with sudden spirit; "Now look here, girls, something's got to be done about this. We really will make ourselves sick if we don't try to look on the hopeful side of things. It won't do anybody, least of all, ourselves, any good to sit here and mope all day. We've just got to fight against depression and cheer up."
"That's all very well for you, Betty," Amy voiced almost the same sentiment as Grace had only a few moments ago, "but you are the only one of us who hasn't been hurt personally. Suppose it were Allen. Would you feel the sameway then—about cheering up and taking it bravely?"
Betty flushed angrily, at the same time feeling a wild desire to go away and cry.
"I hope I would," she said steadily. "And if I didn't, I would surely feel ashamed of myself. It isn't," she paused at the door and looked back at them, "as though Will or the twins were dead. We have hope in both cases, so I don't see any use of giving up. You talk," she choked back a sob, "as though I didn't sympathize, as if I were an outsider just because nothing has happened to—Allen—yet—" her voice choked in a real sob this time and she fled from the room.
The girls gazed after her unhappily.
"Did you ever!" gasped Mollie.
"I didn't mean to make her feel bad. Betty, of all people!" said Amy, conscience stricken. "And of course she's right about our trying to cheer up. Only, I don't want to, someway."
"Betty's a darling," said Mollie thoughtfully. "But of course she can't quite realize how badly we feel. If it were her little brother and sister, now—"
And so gradually Betty came to feel herself more or less of an outsider with these girls who were so close to her. And it was all because they misunderstood her effort to cheer them up andthought she could not feel for them because nothing terrible had happened to her yet.
"I'll show them," she told herself fiercely, "if anything should happen to Allen—" But she shivered and turned away shudderingly from the thought. Allen—if only she could see him for five minutes—just five minutes—
Some way the days dragged through until a week passed, then part of another. Still there had been no clue to the whereabouts of the twins, nor any further news of Will.
"And this is the wonderful vacation we planned!" said Grace with a wry smile, breaking one of the long silences that had become common with the Outdoor Girls these days.
They were, as usual, sitting on the sand and trying to occupy their minds with sewing or reading, yet always with an eye to the road in readiness to rush to their red-headed combination of delivery boy and postman whenever he saw fit to put in an appearance.
Betty opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again. She had learned that any suggestion she might make would be wrongly interpreted by the girls who were engrossed in their own troubles, and so she had wisely decided to say nothing.
"I haven't heard from Frank for ever so long,"said Mollie, as if the fact had just occurred to her. "I wonder if anything can have happened to him?"
"I didn't see any name we knew in the casualty list last night," ventured Betty.
"Betty, is that what you read so carefully every night?" asked Mollie, wide-eyed. "Oh, I don't see how you ever have the courage!" as Betty nodded. "If I saw the name of anybody I—I—cared for in that dreadful list, I don't know what I'd do."
"Oh, I don't know," returned the Little Captain, while a wistful light grew in her eyes and her lips quivered. "When I don't find—what I'm afraid to find—I feel like a criminal who has been reprieved, and it gives me courage to face another day."
Then suddenly the girls saw Betty in her true light. Why, she was suffering too! Think of her reading that awful list every night with fear in her heart! And in the light of this revelation, her brave efforts to cheer them seemed suddenly heroic.
"Betty dear," Mollie moved over toward her friend and put an arm about her. "Do you care that much?"
A little sob of pent-up misery broke from Betty and she dropped her head on Mollie's shoulder.
"Oh, so much!" she whispered brokenly.
Then everybody cried a little and the girls called themselves all sorts of awful names for being "brutes" to their adored Little Captain, and when the storm cleared up everything seemed brighter and they could even smile a little.
Then that night, when the little god of hope seemed about to take his accustomed place in the hearts of the Outdoor Girls, there came another blow, even more staggering than the ones that had gone before.
As Betty was scanning the casualty list with terrified, yet eager, eyes, she gave a little cry, half gasp and half sob that brought the girls running to her.
Her face was ashen pale, and she pointed with trembling finger to a name half-way down in the column.
"Oh, girls, it's come—it's come! Allen! Allen! It can't be true!" and she dropped her head upon her arms, crumpling the paper in her hand.