The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point Part 25

"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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed, 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 G.o.d 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."