“Oh, here’s something characteristic from Isabel,” said Betty a little later. “Listen! She says, ‘I have just devoured the round robin! Query,—what can you devour and not destroy? The answer is,—a round robin. It was so good to hear from you all again.’” Here Betty exclaimed, with a sympathetic “Oh, poor Isabel!”
“What is it?” asked all the girls.
“I’ll just go and read it: ‘You will be sorry for us when I tell you about Lou, who is still in a hospital in France, and we have been so worried. At first we got such good news about him, we thought, but he was gassed and wounded, too, and is not doing very well. Milt is with him, though, and will bring him home in a few weeks, he thinks. Jim is a casual now—I’m thankful to say not a casualty—and is wandering around at the pleasure of various authorities. It is so aggravating when we want him to come home so much and he is needed. But there are other men in the army that are worse off.’”
“Take the New York letters next, Betty, will you? We’ve finished reading these from Pauline and Juliet,—or would you rather read them first.”
“No, I don’t care in what order I read them. Here are those from Cathalina and Lilian. Shall I read Cathalina’s to you?”
“Yes,” said Helen, “and Hilary can read Phil’s.”
The news from New York was especially interesting, though Hilary had heard some of it through letters from Campbell Stuart. The cousins, however, had been widely separated and knew little of each other’s movements.
“Think of it,” said Helen, “another school year almost gone, and the boys coming home!”
“It has been a long year,” said Hilary, “and some of them are sleeping ‘on Flander’s Field’.”
But it was in April that the most astounding news came to Betty and the other girls. It came in a letter from Cathalina, who told how Lilian’s brother Dick came home looking more ‘fit’ than ever in his life, and how he and Captain Van Horne, who was growing strong after his wounds, were in the law office with every chance of success, how Philip was trying to build up the business which had suffered during the war, with much more about everybody. Then she asked, “Are you girls prepared to be bridesmaids in June?”