_ CHAPTER XVI. SPARRING FOR TIME
The roads were muddy from the heavy rain that had fallen over night, but Mollie demurred when the girls suggested that they walk to the station rather than go in the automobile.
"It may be all very well for you," she declared, "but I certainly don't feel in any mood for taking a two-mile walk this morning."
"Well, my knees do feel kind of weak and wobbly," agreed Amy plaintively. "But you know how reckless you are, Mollie, and on these wet roads we're very apt to skid."
"Well, but what's one skid more or less in a good cause?" interrupted Betty merrily. "Besides, I guess we wouldn't have time to walk, anyway," she added quickly, as dozens of soldiers began pouring from their barracks. "We'll never be able to get to the station before the boys unless we take the car."
"Girls, they're really going," wailed Amy, as they quickly got into their wraps.
"Certainly looks like it," said Grace grimly, for once not knowing or caring whether the becoming little hat was tilted at exactly the right angle or not. "It makes me feel all queer and--wobbly inside."
"Better take some candy along," advised Mollie, with a weak attempt at raillery as they ran down the porch steps and piled into the car. "You won't be able to come out of it alive if you're not properly fortified, Gracie."
"Oh, that reminds me," cried Betty, springing from her seat and from the car at the risk of her neck, for the machine had already begun to move. "We forgot the chocolate and tobacco for the boys. Wait for me, Mollie."
But Mollie, who had already brought the car to a standstill with a jerk and a grinding of brakes, leapt out after her, and the two flew up the steps, taking two at a time, and into the house.
Left behind, Amy and Grace looked at each other.
"I wish I could move like that," sighed the latter. "Those two get things done while I'm just beginning to think about it."
"And here they come back again," marveled Amy.
"Yes we have, and it's just about time, too," panted Betty, as they scrambled into the machine. "The boys are coming from the main gate now, and we'll have to make things hum if we want to get there before them."
"As Frank would remark," agreed Mollie: "'You said it!' This is going to be the race of a lifetime,"
"But Mollie," said Amy, gripping both hands tight in her lap as the car swerved sharply and executed a magnificent skid on two wheels, "you know it won't do either the boys or us any good if we get killed on the way. Do be--"
"Amy Blackford," cried Mollie in an ominous tone of voice, "if you say that word to me again I will run into a tree or something just for spite!"
Amy gave a plaintive little moan, and her two hands gripped tighter in her lap.
"All right," she said. "I'm glad I made my will a couple of days ago."
Grace turned an interested and speculative eye upon her.
"Oh, you did," she remarked, adding in a wheedling tone, "What did you leave me, dear? You know I always was your best friend."
"Goodness, I wonder who's my worst then," retorted Amy, with an unexpected flash of humor.
"Oof, that was a bad one, Gracie," Betty laughed, glad of any diversion to keep the vision of those splendid, marching boys in the background as long as possible.
Unconsciously the girls were sparring for time. They knew that once they let themselves think, that once they let themselves realize the full significance, the utter finality of this thing that was about to happen, it would be hard for them to smile. And they so wanted to smile!
They had been so glad, so proud when the boys had volunteered among the very first. Down in their hearts they had known that that was the only thing they could have done.
And the thought of their going away had seemed so far in the future that, as yet, it need not worry them. Blinded by their own passionate patriotism, they had seen all of the glory of war and none of its horror.
And now, in order to send the boys away with the thought of bright faces and encouraging smiles to cheer them on their long, grim journey, the girls joked and laughed, carefully avoiding the subject that was uppermost in their minds.
"Oh, well, that's all a person can expect in this world," Grace had answered resignedly, in reply to Amy's thrust. "Just be kind and loving and thoughtful of other people's comfort, and you're sure to be sat upon--"
"Goodness, she doesn't think anything of herself, does she?" Mollie flung back over her shoulder. "Now see what you made me do!" the exclamation was fairly jerked from her as the car lurched into a deep rut at the side of the road, skidded for a minute, seemingly uncertain whether to fling them out on the bank or continue its way, then bumped up on the road again and continued its flight.
"Oh, Mollie, do be--" Amy began, but a sudden grim straightening of Mollie's back warned her in time and with a gasp she choked back the forbidden word.
"Goodness, isn't she well trained?" laughed Betty, as Mollie bent once more over the wheel.
"Who wouldn't be," protested Amy plaintively, "if a cannibal should come and hang an axe over his head--?"
"Is she calling me names?" demanded Mollie ferociously, half turning in her seat. "If she is, please tell her to say it to my face."
"Well, I would if I could," cried poor Amy desperately. "But I'd have to be an acrobat--or an idiot--"
"The last ought to be easy," drawled Grace, then hastily offered her candy. "I didn't mean it, Amy dear," she retracted humbly. "Really I didn't."
"Don't you believe her," said Betty whimsically. "She only wants to find out what you left in your will, Amy."
"I wouldn't dare tell her now, anyway," returned Amy, with a twinkle. "Methinks it might very easily become my death warrant."
"How so?" queried Mollie with interest--or perhaps it might be said, Mollie's back expressed interest. For Mollie's back could express, Grace had once said, "more emotions in a minute than most people's faces could in a year." And, riding as they so often did, in full view of that expressive back, the girls had come to interpret its owner's emotions correctly in nine cases out of ten. So now they were able to detect a very quickened interest.
"Why," Amy explained naively, "it's barely possible that I've left something to Mollie, too, isn't it?"
"Barely," agreed Mollie dryly.
"Well," Amy chuckled, "then what would be easier than for Mollie to precipitate an accident, dash my brains out against some convenient tree, and then brazenly protest all innocence in the murder."
"Nothing," said Mollie, with the same dryness of intonation, "except the bare possibility of dashing my own brains out in the transaction."
"Oh, well, it could be fixed," said Amy with confidence.
"Do you really think so?" Mollie's back once more betrayed a lively interest, and the girls chuckled. "Suppose you tell me about it."
"And sign my own death warrant?" returned Amy plaintively. "Goodness, you must think I'm foolisher than I am."
"Impossible," retorted Mollie and once more Amy sighed and folded her hands resignedly in her lap.
"All right," she threatened, "if we only live through this, I'll change my will, that's all, and leave everything to Betty and Mrs. Sanderson."
"Goodness, what have I done?" cried Grace in dismay. "Didn't I just offer you another candy and--and--everything"
"I didn't notice the everything," said Amy.
"Well, you noticed the candy," retorted Grace with spirit, "and it was the fattest, juiciest one in the box, too."
"Well, give it back, Amy," directed Mollie, and Amy, in the act of swallowing the fat juicy chocolate, choked on a chuckle.
"Too late," she cried. "It is decapitated."
"I thought I heard its death rattle," sighed Grace, mournfully adding, as the girls laughed at her: "Oh, I don't know what's the matter with me this morning. I never felt so foolish before.
"Girls," she said, and suddenly her voice quivered and her eyes filled, "I've tried so not to think of it, but I can't fight it off much longer. Will and I have always been such chums, played and worked and even--quarreled--together--"
"Please don't, Gracie," cried Betty, her face flushing and her eyes growing dark and wide. "It would be so easy just to g-give way, but we're in the service, too, you know, and we must be at least as b-brave as the boys."
"I--I guess maybe that's impossible," said Mollie, her voice, even her straight little back betraying emotion. "Nobody could be as b-brave as they are."
"Well, we never know what we can do till we try, do we?" cried Betty, that indomitable fighting spirit of hers rising to the emergency. "If we say we can't, of course we can't, but we can do our best, can't we? If the boys aren't c-crying, why should we?"
"That's the way to talk," cried Mollie, straightening defiantly at the challenge. "We don't have to, and, what's more, we won't!" _