"Squeeze in tight,
Amy, or you'll get your toes stepped on. Grace, look again. How far away
are they?"
"Just around the corner," reported Grace. "Goodness," she cried in sudden
panic, "I almost wish we'd stayed in the automobile. I'd feel s-safer--"
"Safer?" cried Mollie scornfully, "I'd like to know what there is to be
afraid of. Oh, there you go again," shaking an impotent little fist as the
great train rumbled into the station with a screaming of brakes and a
shrieking of whistles.
And then the flood broke. Down the station platform came hundreds upon
hundreds of khaki-clad figures, talking, gesticulating, faces eagerly
flushed, eyes brilliant as they prophetically looked into the future.
"Oh, we'll never be able to pick them out of the crowd," cried Grace
despairingly. "I'm getting cross-eyed as it is. Oh, there's Corporal
Harris! Yes, and there goes James McDonald! Oh, oh--"
And indeed there were scores of familiar faces among the boys that were
passing perhaps forever out of their lives. Some saw the girls and saluted
them gaily, but most of them were too intent upon boarding the train
and embarking upon the glorious adventure with as little delay as possible
to look either to the right or the left.
Then, just as the girls thought they must have missed "their own
particular four" and were bracing themselves to stand the disappointment,
they saw them!
They were together, the four of them, splendid specimens of young manhood
with their cropped heads and service hats and packs slung over their
backs.
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