"But what was the row?" he persisted. "I'm sure I interrupted something, and if I'm still intruding, I'll go away so you can finish it."
"Oh, we were just starting a new kind of war," Mollie explained. "We call it the war of the knitting needles."
"That's just what I told the fellows," said Allen, shaking his head sorrowfully, "only they wouldn't believe me."
"Now what are you talking about?" asked Grace, without looking up from her knitting. "I know you want somebody to ask it, so I'll be—as you would say in vulgar slang—the goat."
"That's right! Blame it all, even the slang, on us," said Allen plaintively. "That's the way the girls——"
"Goodness, you can't tell us anything about ourselves we don't know," said Mollie impatiently. "We want to know what you told the boys."
"Oh, about the needles," said Allen, stretching out his long legs, and locking his fingers behind his head. "I just happened to remark that while we were killing each other off with bayonets in the trenches, the women and girls would be knitting themselves to death at home, so there would probably be an equal number of both sexes when the war was over."
"Oh, dear, there you go, joking about it again," sighed Amy. "And you made me lose a stitch too. Oh, dear, that's the first one in the whole sweater."
"Hand it over," said Betty patiently. "I may be able to catch it for you, so you won't have to rip out too much. Oh, Allen, what do you suppose we are going to do?"
"What?" queried Allen, gazing admiringly from the busy deft fingers to the pretty bent head.