Several months had passed since that day of mingled tears and pride and heartache, and the girls had had time to get used to the separation a little—a very little. And now Betty had brought them the letters they were always hungry for, anxiously eager, yet always, at the very back of their hearts, a little haunting fear of what they might contain.
For several minutes they sat engrossed while occasionally one of them read a funny or characteristic extract over which they laughed happily.
"Listen to this," chuckled Mollie, while the girls looked up expectantly. "Frank says that Roy is getting terribly fat in spite of all the exercise—"
"Horrors!" interjected Grace.
"And when he, Frank, ventured to remonstrate with him the other day and advised him to cut down on his chow, Roy said: 'Nothing doing! I've got a definite end in view, old man. This khaki outfit has acquired so much terra firma it's beginning to stand alone, but if I get so fat I can't wear it they'll have to give me another one—see?'"
The girls laughed, but there was just a shade of wistfulness in their laughter, for they knew that the boys were only skirting the outer edge of the hardships they would be called upon to encounter later on.
Then suddenly Betty gave a little cry of dismay.
"Oh, girls," she cried when they looked up at her fearfully, "it's come! What we've been dreading so long! The boys have been ordered to the front!"