But just at the moment the girl with the brown eyes and the pink cheeks looked up, gave one little startled cry, and dropped the book to the porch.

The other girls looked up and then followed a scene that very nearly made the temporarily forgotten and neglected old man on the porch drop out of his chair in surprise.

“Allen!” screamed the girls, all except the brown-haired, pink-cheeked one, who, for some unaccountable reason hung back behind the others.  “You perfect angel!”

“Why didn’t you let us know you were coming so that we could have been prepared?”

“Oh, isn’t your uniform lovely!”

“And look at the dressed-up leggings!”

These and various other exclamations like them, coupled to the fact that all the girls, except the one that he wanted to most, had kissed him, rather overwhelmed young Lieutenant Washburn and took his breath away.

His three companions, however, finding themselves neglected and out in the cold, interfered at this point and saved his life.

“Betty, what are you hiding away back there for?” cried Mollie to the Little Captain, whose cheeks were pinker than ever and whose eyes were shining very brightly with a sort of mixture of joy and fright.  “Don’t you know Allen in his uniform?”

“Aren’t you going to kiss him?” chimed in Grace wickedly.

“We all did,” added Amy.

But Betty had no intention of kissing Allen, although he begged her to with his laughing eyes and she continued backing into the doorway, until Mrs. Irving, coming up behind her, caught her up and pushed her out upon the porch again.

However, the chaperon monopolized Allen for a few minutes and gave Betty time to catch her breath.  She found Mollie introducing Professor Dempsey to the astonished boys.  These young soldiers wanted to ask a hundred questions, but, catching a warning look from Betty, decided to wait till later, when the little man himself was not present.

Frank, who was perhaps more glad than any of them to see the father of his chums alive and well, settled himself near the man and began to pour into his starved and eager ears news of his sons and tales of adventures in which they had figured.

And while Betty was still smiling in sympathy with the look of absolute happiness on Professor Dempsey’s face, Allen dragged himself away from the group of his admirers and came over to her.

Boldly he pulled her hand through his arm and led her past the laughing boys and girls, down the steps, and along the path that led into the woods.

“Be back in time for supper,” Will called after them.  “Something tells me we are going to have some feed.”

“Oh, don’t bother them,” they heard Mollie’s voice in laughing reproof.  “Remember, you were young yourself, once!”

“And now,” said Allen, when they had gone just far enough for the trees and bushes to screen them from the view of the people on the porch, “I want you to look at me, Betty.  You haven’t yet, you know.”