“You needn’t be, dearie.”  The old eyes twinkled and the old hand was very gentle as it patted Betty’s cheek reassuringly.  “I’m always glad to see you and I’ve told you to come right in any time.  I was thinking very hard, I guess, and that’s why I didn’t hear you.”

“Then we may stay a little while?” said Betty, relieved.  “But please tell us if we’ll be a bother,” she added hastily, as the old woman turned once more to the window.

“No, no, I was hoping you would come,” said the latter so eagerly that Betty knew her impulse had been a correct one.  The old woman had wanted some one—­some one who understood—­to pour out her heart to.

“It was wonderful just to sit here and watch those boys who went, an’ I’ve been thinkin’ of it,” she said, after a brief silence.  “Only, somethin’ inside o’ me, I guess ‘twas my heart, kept bleedin’ an’ cryin’ out that my boy should have been among them—­my little brown-eyed Willie who used to sit out in the sun readin’ every minute he could get.  I can see him now, sittin’ there, jest as if ’twas yesterday—­” Her voice trailed off, and in a silence eloquent with sympathy the girls waited for her to go on.

“But I wanted to tell those boys too,” she cried, straightening up with sudden fire, “that my Willie wasn’t only a reader an’ as bright as a dollar,—­he could fight, too.  He’d have made a soldier to be proud of.

“It wouldn’t be near so bad,” she added, turning to the girls with such a depth of tragedy in her eyes that their hearts bled for her, “if I could only be sure o’ his bein’ dead.  It’s the heartbreak of not knowin’ that’s goin’ to kill me in the end!

“But there,” she said, catching herself up as though ashamed of the outburst, “seems like I talk to you little ladies more’n I ever talked to anybody else in all my life.  Seems like it’s jest been bottled up inside o’ me so long it’s jest got to come out.

“I wish you’d tell me,” she added, looking at them wistfully, “when it bothers you, an’ I’ll jest bottle it all up again twice as tight as ’twas before.”

“Oh, please,” cried Amy, taking one of the work-worn hands and pressing it earnestly between her own warm ones.  “We just feel honored to think that you trust us enough and like us enough to tell us these things.  If you didn’t we’d be miserable!”

“Indeed we should,” added Betty fervently.

Mrs. Sanderson looked from one of the flushed earnest faces to the other, and her eyes filled slowly with tears.

“I never thought,” she said tremulously, “that there were girls like you in the world.”

Several days later Mrs. Watson, their chaperone, and the head of the Hostess House, called the girls to her for a consultation, and, wondering what new thing was in store for them, they responded to the call.

The boys had been gone for a week, time enough to get accustomed—­a little—­to the feeling of loss that had so oppressed them during the first few days.