“Rave on, rave on, Macbeth,” chuckled Betty, adding with a whimsical smile and a quickened heart beat as she fingered the letter she had so carefully placed under the rest:  “There’s no use, Mollie dear—­you can’t start a rumpus now.  It can’t be done.  We’re all too good-natured.”

“That’s the way Frank talks after a particularly good meal,” chuckled Mollie.

“And I never saw boys who were so absolutely crazy about hot biscuits,” sighed Amy.  “If you gave them enough hot biscuits, they didn’t seem to know or care whether they had anything else or not.”

“Yes, somebody was always stirring up biscuit dough when we were at Pine Island,” agreed Grace, her eyes dreamy.  “I think one of us should have invented a patent stirrer—­just in self-defense!”

“Just the same, I’d wager anything,” cried Betty, with a thrill in her voice and the hint of tears behind the brightness of her eyes, “that there isn’t one of us who wouldn’t be willing to make biscuits from morning till night if we only had the boys here to eat them.”

“Oh, wouldn’t we!” cried Amy hungrily.  “I shouldn’t care if I turned into a biscuit!”

They laughed at that, but the laugh was not scornful, for their hearts were very full and tender.

“Sha’n’t we stop here?” Mollie asked, after they had ridden a long, long way in silence.  “It’s private enough—­”

“Oh, yes, yes,” the others interrupted her eagerly, and as Mollie guided the car over to the side of the road, Betty sprang the news she had been bursting to tell ever since they started.

“Girls,” she cried, and quickly they turned to her, sensing something unusual in her tone, “I have a surprise for you.”

“Yes?” they cried eagerly.

“It’s about our Sergeant William Mullins Sanderson,” she announced, her eyes sparkling.

“Yes?” they cried again, and Mollie added impatiently: 

“Oh, Betty, don’t keep us waiting.  What about him?”

“Only,” said Betty, speaking very slowly and distinctly, “that he’s got the thing he wanted most in the world—­besides his mother.  This morning he received his overseas orders.”

“Oh, Betty!” cried Mollie, her eyes big and round.  “Isn’t he simply wild about it?”

“He’s delirious,” said Betty simply, adding, with the ring of pride in her voice:  “He seemed two inches taller when he told me about it.  Oh, the spirit of our boys—­the wonderful spirit of them!  It can’t take them long, it can’t, when they once get started!”

“But Mrs. Sanderson,” put in Amy gently.  “How is she taking it?”

“I haven’t seen her yet,” said Betty, her face sobering a little.  But it brightened again as she added with conviction:  “I think we know enough about that little lady to be sure she’ll take it standing up and be prouder than ever of her ‘Willie boy.’”

“Of course she will,” said Grace softly, her eyes following the red disc of the sun as it sank slowly in the west.  “We’re all awfully proud of them, but I don’t think any of us can help wishing that it were all over instead of just beginning, and that the boys were coming home to us victorious.”