"Well," remarked Mollie, with a desperate gleam in her eye, "I'd marry just about anybody who would give me a square meal."
"Goodness," remarked Betty, twinkling, "it's mighty lucky for Frank that there aren't any young men of marriageable age on the horizon just now."
The next moment she regretted her innocent little speech, for she could see that the mention of the boys had brought more vividly to Grace and Mrs. Ford and Amy the thought of Will—dear, bright, merry Will—lying wounded in some far-away hospital, how badly wounded they could not know, and dared not think.
The silence that fell upon them was broken by the sound of their hostess' voice, evidently issuing a command to some one in the kitchen. Then the lady herself swept into the room.
"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long," she apologized, "but I have had to help the maid get dinner on the table. She is a new one, and, oh, so utterly helpless. Then, too, I was hoping my son would come home, but since everything is ready and I know you must be starving, we won't delay dinner any longer. If you will come, please—"
"But this is imposing upon good nature," protested Mrs. Ford, as the lady held back the portiers and disclosed an inviting table set for seven, elaborate with shining crystal and silver. "To drop down upon you from a clear—or rather, a cloudy sky—"
They laughed, and their hostess dismissed the protest with a little wave of her hand.
"It is a pleasure," she said, adding, as they took their places: "I am only thankful that a lucky chance enabled me to entertain you well to-night. I was expecting guests from the nearest farm, but since our next door neighbors are five miles down the road, they hesitated to make the trip because of the threatening weather. I guess it is just as well for them they did not come," and she paused to listen to the rain which was still pouring down in torrents.
Mrs. Ford made an appropriate answer, and the two ladies entered into a little confidential chat that left the girls pretty much to their own devices. And they were trying their best not to disgrace themselves and to pay decorous attention to what their hostess was saying, while their hearty young appetites were crying their protests aloud.
At last came the new maid whom their hostess had described as 'so utterly helpless,' looking to the famished girls an angelic being, bearing about her an aroma of tomato soup and fried chicken, more tempting than ambrosia.