Under ordinary circumstances the Outdoor Girls would have given the incident considerable attention. But now their thoughts were of the soldier boys so soon to leave.
"Didn't the boys say they were entraining for Philadelphia?" asked Grace, trying hard to make her voice sound natural and merely conversational.
"Yes, that's where a great many of them go," Betty answered, praying desperately that she might fight down that flood of tears that every moment threatened to rise and overwhelm her. "I won't be weak and f-foolish," she was saying, over and over, to herself. "I won't, I won't, I won't!"
Then the car came to a standstill beside the platform and the girls sat looking at each other, not quite sure what to do next.
"Do you think it would be all right to stay here?" asked Mollie uncertainly. "Of course we could get out when the boys came."
"It's a little conspicuous, don't you think?" suggested Amy mildly.
"Yes, it looks as if we had come to see a parade or something," Grace agreed.
There was a great deal of luggage and many boxes piled at one end of the station and it was upon these that Betty's eyes, roaming in search of some sheltered spot, finally focused.
"We could slip in behind those packing cases and things," she suggested; "and then we could see without being too much seen ourselves."
"Then the boys might not see us," protested Mollie, clenching her teeth over her trembling lip. "We don't want them to think we weren't here to say g-good-bye."