“Yes, that’s where a great many of them go,” Betty answered, praying desperately that she might fight down that flood of tears that every moment threatened to rise and overwhelm her.  “I won’t be weak and f-foolish,” she was saying, over and over, to herself.  “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”

Then the car came to a standstill beside the platform and the girls sat looking at each other, not quite sure what to do next.

“Do you think it would be all right to stay here?” asked Mollie uncertainly.  “Of course we could get out when the boys came.”

“It’s a little conspicuous, don’t you think?” suggested Amy mildly.

“Yes, it looks as if we had come to see a parade or something,” Grace agreed.

There was a great deal of luggage and many boxes piled at one end of the station and it was upon these that Betty’s eyes, roaming in search of some sheltered spot, finally focused.

“We could slip in behind those packing cases and things,” she suggested; “and then we could see without being too much seen ourselves.”

“Then the boys might not see us,” protested Mollie, clenching her teeth over her trembling lip.  “We don’t want them to think we weren’t here to say g-good-bye.”

“Well, they’ll see the car, won’t they?” Betty argued, a little impatiently, for even her sweet temper was beginning to give way under the strain.  “They’ll know by that that we’re here and then if they miss us, they deserve to—­that’s all.”

“Well, I suppose we’ll have to take a chance,” said Molly, almost crossly, as she jumped out after Betty.  “I only wish it was all over.  The waiting is getting on my nerves.”

“Well, you don’t think you’re alone in that, do you?” Grace was beginning when Betty interrupted with a little hysterical laugh.

“I—­I don’t see how it’s going to make us feel very much better to quarrel about it,” she said, adding whimsically:  “Come ahead you two—­kiss and make up before the boys come.  You know they always said it made them jealous enough to commit murder when we did it in their presence.”

They laughed unsteadily, and Mollie threw an affectionate and repentant arm about the Little Captain’s shoulders.

“Betty, dear, you make me ashamed of myself,” she said impulsively.  “As if you didn’t have enough to worry about yourself without my making you more.  I’m a selfish pig, that’s all.”

Just then the sound that they had all been unconsciously listening for struck heavily upon their ears.  The regular tramp, tramp of hundreds, thousands, of marching feet!

“Oh, they’re coming, they’re coming!” cried Amy, in a sort of suffocated little moan.

“Well, of course they’re coming,” retorted Mollie, her nerves jumping with the effort to speak coolly.  “We’ve been almost expecting that they would, haven’t we?”

“Oh, I know.  But it all seemed like a terrible d-dream till now,” returned Amy, looking so like a bewildered child that Betty put a comforting arm about her and drew her into the little recess beside her.