"Oh, what?" cried Grace, her face growing white while Amy clutched the back of a chair.
Betty tried to pull herself together. She turned the pages of the letter in search of a particular place. Finding it, she began:
"He says that Will—Oh read it," she cried, thrusting the letter into Grace's hands. "There it is—that paragraph. Read it aloud, Grace. Oh, I think—I think—I'll die of joy!"
CHAPTER XXIV
HIS THREE SWEETHEARTS
Grace's eyes filled with tears of sheer weakness, but she brushed them away impatiently. Then she read, brokenly at first, then radiantly as the marvelous truth came home to her.
"'Poor old Will certainly did have a narrow escape,'" she read, "'but thanks to the gods he is out of danger now. I went to see him yesterday—got leave for the first time in weeks—and he was looking mighty chipper. No wonder, with the good looking nurse he had.'"
Amy gave a little involuntary sound and then blushed scarlet when the girls looked at her.
"Never mind!" cried the joy incarnate that was Betty, putting an arm about her. "Just wait till you hear what he says later on. Go on, Gracie."