"And I'm feeling faint," Amy added. "I shouldn't wonder if a cup of tea would go awfully well."
"You poor little thing," said Betty, putting an arm about her. "No wonder you feel faint. We should have given you something to strengthen you long ago. I don't know what we've been thinking of!"
"It's all my fault," said Mollie contritely, noticing suddenly how white Amy's face was and how dark were the circles under her eyes. "I let my own affairs make me forget everything else. Why didn't you say something, Amy?"
"I didn't think of it myself," Amy answered truthfully, "until Betty spoke of being hungry. Girls," she paused outside her door to sniff inquiringly, "do I smell something, or am I dreaming?"
"I'll say you smell something," Grace answered, sniffing hungrily in her turn. "It's mother getting lunch, of course. I don't know what we ever would have done without her."
While the girls were dressing the threatened storm was coming nearer, and toward the end they had to put on the light to see to fix their hair.
Even had the sun been shining brightly, they would have felt depressed, what with Amy's accident and the bad news Mollie had received; but with the wind wailing dolefully and black darkness in the middle of the day, they felt themselves growing utterly discouraged.
Grace had heard no further news of Will, and the one straw of hope that she clutched so desperately was that he had not died, or surely her father would have heard. In this case, no news was good news to a certain extent.
And as for Betty, brave as she had tried to be since that terrible night when she had read Allen's name among the missing, even she felt her courage slipping—slipping, and began to wonder if after all, hoping did any good.
To-day, as she stood before the mirror, mechanically putting up her hair and looking through and past her own reflection, her eyes suddenly lost their preoccupied stare and became focused upon herself. For the first time in days she was seeing herself without the mask of cheerfulness she had so determinedly assumed. And as she looked, her eyes suddenly filled with tears—tears almost of self-pity.