"'In a week!' the major was saying eagerly. 'The boys will be glad of
that, Colonel. I've had all I could do to keep them pacified at all. Once
let them get at the Huns and it will be all over but the shouting.'

"'Yes, they're a fine bunch of young fighters,' the colonel answered. And,
oh girls, I wish you could have seen the way he looked, so splendidly
straight and martial and proud. 'I tell you, Major,' he said, 'it's a
great thing to have the leadership of such lads as those. They're the pick
of the nation.'

"And then I went on and my heart was beating so hard I had to hold on to
it," Betty finished. "It seemed to me I could almost hear the cannon and
see the boys--our boys--"

Her voice trailed off into silence, and for a long time no one spoke. Each
one of these young girls, who, a few short months before, had scarcely
known the meaning of the word war except as they had read about it in
their histories, was striving desperately to visualize the battle
front--the trenches, great guns belching forth a deadly hail of shells,
the roar of cannon, the moans of dying men--

And there, perhaps, in the mire and horror of it all--the boys--their
boys--




CHAPTER XIII