behind, the girls looked at one another with wide frightened eyes.

"Girls, she worries me," said Mollie, speaking in a whisper, almost as
if there were death in the house. "She is so quiet and still. And when
one knows Betty--"

"If she could only cry a little," said Grace, speaking in the same tone.
"It makes things so much worse when you keep them bottled up that way."

"Betty's so proud and so brave," said Amy gently, as she sank into a
chair and looked up, wide-eyed, at the other two. "Only this afternoon
she let us see how terribly she cared."

"And no wonder," said Grace, for there was real grief in her heart.
"There never was a finer fellow than Allen. He made us all love him."

"But there we go again, speaking as if he were dead," protested Mollie.
"There is always hope, since his name is only among the missing."

"Yes, of course; but it is generally as Betty said," returned Grace.
"Nine-tenths of the men reported missing are either dead or have fallen
into the hands of the Germans."

Mollie shuddered.

"Poor little Betty," she said. "The very thought of it is enough to
drive her crazy."

"If she would only let us comfort her," sighed Amy.

"I--I really think that if she doesn't call us in a few minutes, we'd
better go up anyway," said Grace nervously. "She looked so terribly
queer and unlike herself that I'm worried to death. Hark! Did you hear
something?"

The girls listened, but all they could hear was the sighing of the wind
about the house. Then, far off in the distance, came a soft rumble of
thunder.

"Oh, I hope it doesn't storm," cried Amy, shivering. "That would be
about the last straw."

And upstairs, in the room that Betty shared with Grace, grief and fear
and horror stalked about unfettered and gazed upon the little figure on
the bed.

So still and white and rigid it was that the girls would have been still
more frightened could they have seen it. For, propped on her elbows,
with grim, set face supported by her clenched fists, Betty was gazing
unseeingly out at the darkness beyond the square of window pane.

"Somewhere he's out there," she kept saying over and over to herself.
"If he's dead, there's the mud and grime--" she shuddered "--and blood
too--rivers of it. But if he's captured--Oh, I can't think--I mustn't
think--"

And then she would begin all over again--

"Allen is lying out there--" over and over again, till her brain whirled
and her head ached and she felt faint a