Mollie?"

"I asked you," returned Mollie, with deliberation, "where the other boys
were."

"I don't know, and what's more I don't care," replied Roy independently,
leaning back and crossing his long legs with a sigh of content. "We've all
been trying to get leave to come over and see you girls, and so far I'm
the only one who's succeeded. The old boy, that is, the colonel," he
corrected himself, gravely saluting the imaginary officer, "is drawing the
reins pretty tight these days. Looks," he added, striving to keep the
excitement out of his voice, "pretty much like business."

"Like business," they repeated in chorus, and were about to follow it up
with a shower of questions when there was the sound of more masculine
voices in the hall and the missing members of the quartette precipitated
themselves upon the assembled company. Roy looked disgusted--the girls
happy.

"So you thought you'd have the field all to yourself, did you?" Allen
demanded of the disconsolate Roy. "Well, that's the time you counted your
chickens too soon."

Then, turning to Betty, he caught her two hands in his and waltzed her
exuberantly about the room.

"Betty, Betty," he cried, his voice keen, his eyes shining with
excitement, "we've got special permission to tell you, because you're in
the service. We're going, little girl! We're on our way to lick the tar
out of those Huns!"