The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point

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"Yes. Until?" they baited her, forgetting for a moment the dark shadows
hanging over them in the fun of this unexpected discovery.

"Until the morning we came away," Betty answered, seeing that she could
not get away from these pitiless inquisitors until she had satisfied
their curiosity.

"Did he ask to write to you then?" probed Mollie relentlessly.

"I don't see what right--" Betty was beginning spiritedly when she
caught Mollie's eye and ended in a little helpless laugh. "I suppose
I'll have to tell you all about it or you'll turn a simple little
molehill into a mountain."

"Quite right," said Grace cheerfully, and even Betty had to laugh at
her.

"Make a clean breast of it," ordered Mollie.

"But there really isn't anything to make a clean breast of," protested
Betty. "He simply asked me if he might write and tell me how he--how
he--"

"How he what?" they queried.

"But I don't know whether I ought to tell you about that or not." Betty
was really in earnest. "You see, what he told me was sort of in
confidence."

"In confidence!" repeated Grace, adding wickedly: "Now we know it's a
serious case."

"Nonsense," said Betty, almost crossly. "He simply said he hadn't been
allowed to get into the army because of ill health, but now that he
felt well again he was going to try once more. It was that he wanted to
write and tell me about. And because I was really interested, I said he
might. That's all."

"How romantic!" cried Mollie irrepressibly. "For goodness sake, hurry up
and read it, Betty, and relieve our curiosity."

"I'll read it," said Betty firmly, "when I get good and ready, and not
one minute before!"

CHAPTER XVIII

SERIOUSLY WOUNDED

They walked the rest of the distance to the house in absorbed silence,
reading as they went. Then suddenly Betty gave a little cry of
amazement.

"I thought this was for me," she said, holding up a letter. "But it
isn't. It's for your mother, Grace. I don't see how I could have made
such a mistake!"

But Grace only heard the first part of Betty's speech. The last of it
passed right over her head.

"A letter for mother?" she cried. "Oh, give it to me, Betty. It may be
from dad. Oh, it is! It is!" she exclaimed, as she saw her father's
familiar writing. "He must have heard about Will. Mother! Mother--" she
broke away from the girls and took the porch steps two at a time, waving
the letter wildly as she went.

"Oh, if it's only good news, if it's only good news!" Betty found
herself saying over and over again as she, with Mollie, followed Grace
into the house.

They found Mrs. Ford in the living room, pale and trembling a little,
holding the envelope in her hand as though she dared not open it. Grace
had collapsed in a chair and was gazing up at her mother with such
agonized pleading in her eyes that the girls could not look at her.

Then very slowly Mrs. Ford tore open the envelope. At the same moment
the girls seemed to sense that they might be in some manner intruding,
and with one accord they moved over to the window and stood looking out.

After a wait that seemed interminable they heard Grace say in a
strained, far-away little voice:

"Mother, what is it? Can't you tell me? I think I'll die if I have to
wait any longer."

"Read it," they heard Mrs. Ford say in a choked voice, as a rustle of
paper told that she had handed the letter to Grace. "I can't tell you
dear. Oh, my boy, my boy!" And she sank down in a chair and covered her
face with her hands.

The girls turned from the window and started to leave the room, for they
felt that the moment was too sacred for even them who were so intensely
interested, to share.

Just as they reached the door they paused, arrested by a cry from
Grace.

"Seriously wounded!" she read in a muffled voice. "Oh, Mother, for all
we know, that may mean Will is--dead!"

They were startled by a muffled sob, and turned in time to see Amy rush
from the room. Poor little Amy! In the excitement and grief of the
moment they had forgotten that she might also be affected by this news
of Will!

Betty and Mollie ran upstairs after her, leaving Grace and her mother
together.

"And I was so hoping," said Betty as she closed the door softly and
Mollie flung herself on the bed, "that it would be good news."

"Yes," said Mollie, staring moodily out the window, "it does seem that
everything terrible that can happen to us is happening all at once. I
wonder what's next."

"There isn't going to be any next," said Betty, but in her heart she was
not so sure. Almost everyone in the world was suffering, one way or
another, and it was only to be expected that they would get their full
share.

And as she thought of Allen a hot wave of fear went over her, leaving
her faint and sick. Out there in the very thickest of the fight, it
would be a miracle if he should be saved to come back to her.

But he must come back, he _must_ come back, her heart cried over and
over again. Hadn't he said he would? And Allen always kept his word.

Then she shook herself, and with an effort brought her wandering thought
back to this new trouble--or rather, confirmation of an old one.

From the time Mrs. Ford had received the telegram telling of Will's
wound, they had hoped against hope that it had been a mistake, or that
at least, the wound had not been serious.

But this new report from Washington seemed to put an end to that hope,
and there was nothing to do but to face the terrible reality. Will was
seriously wounded in some hospital in France, and, as Grace had said,
that might mean that even now he was in a critical condition, perhaps,
for all they knew, he had died out there away from all his dear ones and
the friends that loved him.

"I don't suppose there is any use acting as though he were dead
already," said Mollie, breaking in upon her unhappy reverie. "There have
been several thousand wounded soldiers over there who have recovered."

"Yes, only to be sent back again to the firing line and have it done all
over," said Betty bitterly, for, for a time at least, her staunch
optimism had deserted her and she was ready to see the blackest side of
everything.

"Yes, it does seem that once a soldier has gone down to the very gates
of death, he should be exempted," sighed Mollie, adding dispiritedly:
"But I suppose if they made that a rule they wouldn't have any armies
left after awhile."

"And the boys themselves don't want to be exempted," said Betty, feeling
a little thrill of pride in spite of her heartache. "Their one biggest
reason for getting well is to be able to get another 'whack at the
Hun.'"

"Shall we go and see if we can cheer up Amy?" she asked after an
interval filled with gloomy meditation. "She is so brave and quiet about
everything that you never have a chance to guess how hard she is taking
her trouble. Poor girl!"

"I do feel awfully sorry for her," agreed Mollie, shifting unhappily,
"but I must say I don't feel very capable of cheering anybody up myself.
I never felt so horribly discouraged in my life."

"Well, it doesn't do any good to think about it," said Betty. "Maybe if
we try to make poor Amy feel better we'll help ourselves at the same
time."

"I suppose it won't do any harm to try," agreed Mollie, rising wearily.
"But I wish somebody would lend me a smile for a little while till I get
mine back again. I might be able to play the role of merry little
sunshine better."

She gave Betty a wry little smile, and arm in arm they started down the
hall to Amy's room.

The found the door shut, and tapped lightly upon it. When there was no
response they rapped again, then tried the knob and found the door was
locked.

"Whatever in the world--" Mollie was beginning apprehensively, when a
plaintive voice in the room behind the closed door interrupted her.

"Who is it?"

"It's we, Dear--Mollie and Betty," answered Betty quickly. "Can't you
let us in?"

"I--I'd rather not," replied the voice falteringly. "I'm all right, and
I'll be out in a minute. Please don't worry about me. You ought to be
used to my making a goose of myself by this time." This last accompanied
by a pitiful little attempt at a laugh.

"All right, Honey," Betty spoke sympathetically, for she had often seen
the time when even her best friend would have been in the way. "We only
wanted to help, that's all. When you want us we'll be in my room."

Amy murmured something in reply, and they slipped back again into the
other room and closed the door.

"I guess she feels it even worse than we thought she did," said Mollie
pityingly. "When Amy cries she is pretty well cut up."

"Well, I guess all we can do now is just sit still and wait till
somebody wants us," said Betty, sitting down irresolutely and folding
her hands. It was this last action that reminded her of the letter from
Joe Barnes which she had not yet read. Although she had been holding it
in her hand all the while, she had completely forgotten there was such a
person as the writer.

At her exclamation Mollie looked up rather listlessly.

"That's so," she said. "You never did find out whether or not Joe Barnes
had been accepted. Tell me about it. I'd welcome a diversion--a cyclone
or a tidal wave or anything--if it would only get my mind off our
troubles."

"I'll guarantee it would be effective," returned Betty absently, as she
took up the closely written pages. "It would be like burning yourself to
make you forget you have a toothache."

There was silence for a long while, broken only by the sound of the
waves breaking on the shore and the crackling of the paper as Betty
turned page after page.

It was a long letter, filled with youthful enthusiasm. In it the youth
spoke his pleasure in meeting her and his hope that she would not only
answer this letter but would allow him to write to her often.

But over and above all the great fact stood out that he had been
accepted! The doctors had looked him over and declared him fit in every
respect to serve his country.

As Betty read the last glowing sentence a sob broke from her and she
buried her head in her arms. Mollie went over to her quickly.

"What is it?" she asked anxiously, putting an arm about the Little
Captain. "You haven't had bad news too, have you, Betty?"

"N-no," sobbed Betty, raising eyes that were shining through her tears.
"I just love them so--all those splendid boys that are so crazy to give
their lives for their country, that my heart gets too full sometimes,
that's all."

"Then I take it that Joe Barnes has been accepted," Mollie rather stated
than asked.

"Yes," said Betty, feeling for a handkerchief. "And he is simply wild
with joy, Mollie," she added, while the color flooded her face. "The
Germans simply can't last long with that spirit against them. It makes
our boys indomitable!"

CHAPTER XIX

BETTY CONFESSES

Betty woke up the next morning with a sense of deadly depression
weighing her down. For a few moments she lay staring up at the ceiling
trying to collect her thoughts. Then the events of the day before came
back to her and she frowned unhappily.

The whereabouts of poor little Dodo and Paul was still a mystery, and
Will Ford, whom she had come to regard almost as a brother, was terribly
wounded somewhere in France. She probably would never see him again.

And there was Allen too, to worry about every minute of the day and
night. She had not heard from him in--oh, ages. Yes, it must be every
bit of two weeks since she had read his last letter. For all she knew,
he might be worse off than poor Will.

"Oh, well," she sighed, and, turning on her side, looked out of the
window.

There was no relief there from the gloom of her thoughts, for the sky
was leaden and overcast, looking as if it, too, were mourning for the
troubles of the world, and the surf beat loud and threateningly on the
shore.

"Guess it's going to rain and make things still more cheerful," she
said, and at the sound Grace opened heavy eyes and turned over
restlessly.

"What are you mumbling about?" she asked sleepily, closing her eyes
again and sighing a little.

"Nothing but the weather," replied Betty, adding, with unusual
gentleness: "It's early, so you can turn over and get forty winks."

"What has happened to you?" asked Grace, opening her eyes again in
surprise at this unheard of advice. Then as the full force of her
trouble came home to her she turned over noisily and burrowed her head
into the pillow.

"Guess I will," she said in a muffled voice. "Don't any one dare wake me
up till they have some good news to tell me. I'm going to be another Rip
Van Winkle."

"Goodness, I hope it won't be that long before we have any good news,"
said Betty, trying to speak lightly. This would never do, she thought.
They simply had to find some way out of this terrible slough of
despondency before it mastered them completely.

"I'm going to get up," she announced briskly, jumping out of bed. "I've
got to find something to keep me busy till that good news of ours feels
like coming along. I'm getting absolutely morbid just sitting around and
thinking."

"Well, what is there to do?" asked Grace, rolling over and regarding her
listlessly.

"There's the house to be put in order," Betty pointed out, recovering a
little of her old spirits, now that she had decided on a definite plan
of action. "And we never have really unpacked our trunks because Mollie
has been undecided about staying."

"Yes, I know. And my clothes are a perfect wreck. I haven't a thing to
put on that doesn't look as if it had been through the wars," Grace
agreed. "Not that it really matters," she added indifferently.

"Of course it makes a difference," returned Betty sharply. She was
determined to rouse Grace out of her lethargy, no matter what means she
had to take. "Don't you know that when you are dressed neatly and
becomingly everything seems brighter and more hopeful? And, anyway," she
added, watching Grace out of the corner of her eye, "it isn't like you
to be careless about your dress."

"Well, it isn't like me either to go moping around as if I had one foot
in the grave and the other was slipping," retorted Grace, with a spirit
that showed the experiment had worked. "I don't think it's nice for you
to make remarks like that when you know how I'm feeling and the excuse I
have."

"Nobody has any excuse for giving up and acting as if everything were
lost when it isn't," said Betty decidedly. "If our soldiers did that the
first time they had to retreat, how long do you suppose our army would
last?"

"But Will isn't your brother," insisted Grace stubbornly. "If he were,
maybe you would feel differently."

There was a moment's pause.

"No he isn't my brother," returned Betty, knowing she was going to hurt
her friend but believing that the result would justify the means. "But
if he were I would try to behave so that when he came back he would have
a right to be proud of me."

"Betty Nelson!" Grace sprang out of bed with her eyes blazing, "do you
know what you are saying? Do you mean that if Will should come back, he
wouldn't be proud of me?"

"Not if you keep on taking your trouble lying down," said Betty,
sticking gamely to her guns, though she was a little frightened at the
success of her experiment.

"I may," she thought to herself, "have done not wisely, but too well."

However, after one outraged and enraged stare at Betty, Grace pointedly
turned her back and began hastily to pull on her clothes. She finished
dressing before Betty, and without a word left the room.

"Now you have done it, Betty, my dear," said Betty making a little face
at her pretty reflection in the mirror. "I shouldn't wonder if Grace
would never speak to you again. Poor Gracie, perhaps I shouldn't have
said what I did, but I simply had to start something."

On her way downstairs she tapped at Mollie's door and found that she and
Amy were both up and dressing.

"Come in," called Mollie; "I need your help. Amy's eyes are so swollen,"
she explained, as Betty obeyed, "that she can't see to do me up. Just
the middle one, Betty. That's a dear."

As Betty obligingly did the "middle one" she stole a glance at Amy, who
was absently doing up her hair without looking in the mirror.

"Look out!" she cried suddenly, making both the girls jump. "You nearly
stuck that hairpin in your eye, Amy," she explained, as they looked at
her reproachfully, "and that isn't the place for it you know."

Amy smiled a crooked little smile and put the unruly hairpin in the
right place.

"I'm apt to do anything to-day," she said, with a sigh that seemed to
come from her toes. "If any of you want to live, you had just better
keep out of my way, that's all."

"Isn't it just wonderful weather?" said Mollie sarcastically, gazing out
at the leaden landscape. "Just the kind of a day to put the J into Joy."

"If something doesn't happen pretty soon," put in Amy, with another deep
sigh, "I'll just naturally pass away. I wonder," she added, looking
really interested in the subject, "if anybody ever did die of the
blues."

"I don't believe so--but there's always hope," said Betty dryly, adding
with sudden spirit; "Now look here, girls, something's got to be done
about this. We really will make ourselves sick if we don't try to look
on the hopeful side of things. It won't do anybody, least of all,
ourselves, any good to sit here and mope all day. We've just got to
fight against depression and cheer up."

"That's all very well for you, Betty," Amy voiced almost the same
sentiment as Grace had only a few moments ago, "but you are the only one
of us who hasn't been hurt personally. Suppose it were Allen. Would you
feel the same way then--about cheering up and taking it bravely?"

Betty flushed angrily, at the same time feeling a wild desire to go away
and cry.

"I hope I would," she said steadily. "And if I didn't, I would surely
feel ashamed of myself. It isn't," she paused at the door and looked
back at them, "as though Will or the twins were dead. We have hope in
both cases, so I don't see any use of giving up. You talk," she choked
back a sob, "as though I didn't sympathize, as if I were an outsider
just because nothing has happened to--Allen--yet--" her voice choked in
a real sob this time and she fled from the room.

The girls gazed after her unhappily.

"Did you ever!" gasped Mollie.

"I didn't mean to make her feel bad. Betty, of all people!" said Amy,
conscience stricken. "And of course she's right about our trying to
cheer up. Only, I don't want to, someway."

"Betty's a darling," said Mollie thoughtfully. "But of course she can't
quite realize how badly we feel. If it were her little brother and
sister, now--"

And so gradually Betty came to feel herself more or less of an outsider
with these girls who were so close to her. And it was all because they
misunderstood her effort to cheer them up and thought she could not
feel for them because nothing terrible had happened to her yet.

"I'll show them," she told herself fiercely, "if anything should happen
to Allen--" But she shivered and turned away shudderingly from the
thought. Allen--if only she could see him for five minutes--just five
minutes--

Some way the days dragged through until a week passed, then part of
another. Still there had been no clue to the whereabouts of the twins,
nor any further news of Will.

"And this is the wonderful vacation we planned!" said Grace with a wry
smile, breaking one of the long silences that had become common with the
Outdoor Girls these days.

They were, as usual, sitting on the sand and trying to occupy their
minds with sewing or reading, yet always with an eye to the road in
readiness to rush to their red-headed combination of delivery boy and
postman whenever he saw fit to put in an appearance.

Betty opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again. She had
learned that any suggestion she might make would be wrongly interpreted
by the girls who were engrossed in their own troubles, and so she had
wisely decided to say nothing.

"I haven't heard from Frank for ever so long," said Mollie, as if the
fact had just occurred to her. "I wonder if anything can have happened
to him?"

"I didn't see any name we knew in the casualty list last night,"
ventured Betty.

"Betty, is that what you read so carefully every night?" asked Mollie,
wide-eyed. "Oh, I don't see how you ever have the courage!" as Betty
nodded. "If I saw the name of anybody I--I--cared for in that dreadful
list, I don't know what I'd do."

"Oh, I don't know," returned the Little Captain, while a wistful light
grew in her eyes and her lips quivered. "When I don't find--what I'm
afraid to find--I feel like a criminal who has been reprieved, and it
gives me courage to face another day."

Then suddenly the girls saw Betty in her true light. Why, she was
suffering too! Think of her reading that awful list every night with
fear in her heart! And in the light of this revelation, her brave
efforts to cheer them seemed suddenly heroic.

"Betty dear," Mollie moved over toward her friend and put an arm about
her. "Do you care that much?"

A little sob of pent-up misery broke from Betty and she dropped her head
on Mollie's shoulder.

"Oh, so much!" she whispered brokenly.

Then everybody cried a little and the girls called themselves all sorts
of awful names for being "brutes" to their adored Little Captain, and
when the storm cleared up everything seemed brighter and they could even
smile a little.

Then that night, when the little god of hope seemed about to take his
accustomed place in the hearts of the Outdoor Girls, there came another
blow, even more staggering than the ones that had gone before.

As Betty was scanning the casualty list with terrified, yet eager, eyes,
she gave a little cry, half gasp and half sob that brought the girls
running to her.

Her face was ashen pale, and she pointed with trembling finger to a name
half-way down in the column.

"Oh, girls, it's come--it's come! Allen! Allen! It can't be true!" and
she dropped her head upon her arms, crumpling the paper in her hand.

CHAPTER XX

MISSING

Mollie took the paper from Betty's unresisting hand, smoothed it out,
traced her finger down the column and finally came to the name she
sought.

"Sergeant Allen Washburn," she read in a small, awed voice, while the
other girls crowded close to look over her shoulder.

"Dead?" queried Grace breathlessly.

"No," Mollie shook her head. "He's among the missing."

"That means," said Betty, lifting a face so still and white that it
startled the girls, "that he is either dead or worse than dead. I would
a thousand times rather he were dead than have him taken prisoner by the
Germans."

"But we don't know that he has been captured--"

"That's what missing almost always means," insisted Betty, still in that
strange, lifeless voice. "That," she added, as though speaking to
herself, "was the column I always read first, because I was most afraid
of it. I think," she got up unsteadily, and Mollie ran around to her,
"that if you don't mind, I'll go upstairs a little while."

She started for the door while the girls watched her dumbly, not knowing
what to do or say. Then suddenly Grace ran after her.

"Betty, darling!" she cried, her own grief forgotten in her pity for her
chum, "let me come too, won't you? I don't suppose I'd be any good to
you just now, but I'd do my best."

"Let us all come, won't you, Dear?" begged Mollie, while Amy's eyes
silently pleaded.

But Betty only shook her head, smiling a pitiful little white smile, at
them.

"Not just now--please," she said. "After a while I'll--I'll call you."

They watched her run upstairs and heard her door close quietly, oh, so
quietly, behind her.

Left 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?"

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