The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House | Page 7

surveyed their work with satisfaction. "We mustn't let our old lady guess a word of what we've been doing."
"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 sturdy, 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