"Oh, never you mind about that."
"Looks as if it might be in Ruth Stevenson's handwriting," said Andy, with a grin.
There were letters for everybody. Two of the packages were from the Rover boys' homes, and the third had been sent to Spouter by his mother.
"A fruit cake!" exclaimed Fred, as he opened the package addressed to him. "I'll tell you! It takes my mother to remember what us fellows like," and he smacked his lips.
The other package, addressed to Andy and Randy, contained a box of home-made sugar cookies, while that which Spouter had received contained a long loaf of ginger cake and a box of hard candies.
"Well, one thing is sure—they haven't forgotten us," was Spouter's remark, as he passed the candies around.
All the boys were anxious to read their letters, and for the time being everything else was forgotten. Mrs. Dick Rover wrote that nothing of importance had happened at home since they had gone away. Ruth Stevenson and May Powell were still with them, but all of the girls expected to go to the Stevenson homestead to finish their school vacation.
The letter from Dick Rover had been sent from the battlefront in France. In it he related how he and his brothers, as well as some of their old school chums, had been in a number of small engagements. In one of these Tom and Sam Rover had been slightly wounded by the fragments from a shell, and he himself had been in a gas attack, but had escaped without serious injury. All had been sent to the field hospital to be treated, but now they were once more at the front in what were called their winter quarters.
"The Boches are watching us like a cat watches a mouse, and we are equally on the alert," wrote Dick Rover. "There have been no big battles, but sniping is going on constantly, and several of our men have been killed or wounded. We are all anxious to have the cold weather break up, so that we can go forward and finish this war. We feel that we can wallop the enemy, if only we have a chance to get at them."