Bill took a quick step to her side.
"Coffee for three, please, mother," he said. "There is someone else with us. Frank Anderson is here. He knows something about the theft."
Bill stumbled over his statement. Somehow he hated to tell his mother the bald and awful truth about the boy who had been his friend and hers.
She did not wait for further explanations. Already she was moving rapidly about the tiny kitchen, regulating the roaring fire that had already been started by the janitor, and getting out the canister of coffee.
Bill went back to the airplane. With the aid of the soldiers grouped about, he assisted Ernest over to the quarters, and laid him down on the Major's bed. That gentleman called a lathery greeting from the bathroom where he was shaving.
Ernest was in bad condition. The exposure and the lack of proper care had caused his arm to become terribly inflamed. Mrs. Sherman sent an orderly with a side car over to the Hospital on a hurry call for the doctor.
Then she braced the boy carefully with pillows and covered him with a warm blanket. As soon as it was ready, she brought him a cup of hot coffee and an egg, leaving Bill to care for himself and attend to Frank.
Frank had reached a state where he seemed numb. He was past caring what happened. After a hot drink, however, he braced up a little and prepared to face his ordeal. He did not know what it was to be. For all he knew, he would be taken to Leavenworth. It was agony to think that soon someone would go to his father and mother and tell them that their son on whom they had built such hopes was a thief. He sat silent and downcast and only answered in brief sentences when they addressed him. Of course Major and Mrs. Sherman sensed something dreadful, but they were too wise to press their questions until such time as the boys were fed and rested.
A little color had already crept back in Ernest's face, and Bill was seemingly quite himself.
Then he asked Major Sherman to come into the den, and beckoned Frank to follow. The boy did so with the air of a condemned man.