Roy, who had seated himself on the railing of the porch and was swinging his feet, looked more unchanged than either of the boys, though the girls were soon to find out that he had changed the most.
Will, who had settled Amy in a chair and was sitting cross-legged on the floor at her feet, was gazing up at the girl with his heart in his eyes. As for Amy--well, the girls had never known she could look so radiant.
"Have a seat," invited Roy, rising lazily to the dignity of his six feet as Betty and Grace came up on the porch. "It would seem like old times to see you girls perched on the railing."
"I'll have you know, sir," said Betty very demurely, as she pulled Grace down beside her on the top step of the porch, "that we have quite grown up since you have been away. We will sit here where we can get a good view of you all."
"And we want to hear about everything you have done over there," broke in Amy eagerly. "Please, everything--right from the beginning."
The boys fidgeted, looked dismayed, and Roy burst forth in protest.
"Oh, I say!" he cried. "We'll do anything else for you, but please don't ask us to do that."
"We don't want to talk about ourselves or the war," muttered Frank, almost as if to himself. "We want to forget about it--if we can."
"You see," Will explained, and there was a stern note in his young voice, "we worked and we sweated and we fought. We lived under conditions week after week and month after month that it makes us shudder even to think of now. For months we lived in a perfect inferno--and do you know what our idea of heaven was then?"
They said nothing and he went on in a lighter tone.