on't you let us show you how grateful we are by letting us take you
there?"

"Please do," urged Betty.

He considered a moment, then with another of his grave smiles saluted once
more and turned to the boys who stood waiting in the road.

"Pile in, fellows!" he said. "We'll just about make it before the storm."

Then, while the boys obeyed, scrambling in any way, and Betty and Grace
squeezed themselves into the front seat, Sergeant Mullins leaned over and
said, very quietly:

"Thank you."

CHAPTER XIV

THE REINS TIGHTEN

"A week!" sighed Betty. "Oh, Mollie dear, a week's such a very little
time!"

"Goodness, it isn't even that now," Mollie returned, dropping a stitch in
the sweater she was making and not even noticing it--an almost unheard of
procedure. "That is," she added, with a slight little flicker of hope, "if
you're sure you heard the major aright, Betty. Mightn't he have been
speaking of something else?"

"Well, I told you what he said," answered Betty, a trifle impatiently, for
she also had dropped a stitch and saw before her the weary process of
ripping out two whole rows of her helmet--and helmets were such mean
things to make, anyway!

"When he spoke of a week," she added, ripping vindictively, "and then said
that the boys would be glad the waiting was over, it seems to me there's
just about one conclusion we can come to."

"Oh, all right, but you needn't be so cross about it," returned Mollie,
who, being very cross herself, could not make allowance for the malady in
any one else.

"Have you seen any of the boys lately?" she asked, after an interval of
deep concentration. "We've been kept so busy here at the Hostess House
lately with these other boys that our boys might as well be dead and
buried for all I've seen of them."

"Who's talking about being dead and buried?" demanded a third voice, and
they turned to see Grace in the doorway with the inevitable candy box
under her arm.

"Can't you choose a more cheerful subject?" she added, coming in and
seating herself luxuriously in a big chair. "There's enough of that being
done anyway--"

"You talk as if getting dead and buried were some sort of new indoor
sport," interrupted Mollie, glad to have this old familiar enemy to spar
with.

"Goodness, there's no more sport in anything," returned Grace,
disconsolately. "I don't see why any old swell-headed German--"

"Grace!" exclaimed Betty, but with twinkling eyes. "What language!"