"Six-thirty," answered Betty, beginning to dress hurriedly. "That's fifteen minutes later than we should be. Oh, if we should miss seeing them off!"
"Betty, I don't feel like myself at all," said Grace, after a silence during which they had both been plunged in thought. She flourished a shoe in the air and regarded Betty as though it were her fault. "I feel all quivery and shaky and trembly inside, and I don't think I could smile if you paid me for it."
"Goodness, I know I couldn't!" said Betty, and then added as she pinned on the bunch of carnations Allen had brought her the night before: "We've just got to smile, though, whether we feel like it or not. We don't want the boys to remember us in tears."
"I should say not!" responded Grace emphatically. "When I cry I'm a perfect fright. That's why I never do it."
Betty chuckled despite the dull ache at her heart.
"I wasn't quite thinking of that," she said. "But it surely will be better if we're able to smile a little bit. Come on--let's practice."
They stood together before the mirror, doing their best to smile naturally, and their very failure to do it made them laugh at themselves.
"If we're not a couple of geese," said Betty, as arms intertwined, they descended the stairs. "That's about the first time we ever had to _try_ to smile. Now for a bite of breakfast."
But, try though they did, they could not eat, and finally had to give it up entirely.
"We were all to meet at Mollie's, weren't we?" asked Grace, as they made their way down the sun-flooded street. "Oh, Betty, I'm afraid to meet anybody, I'm so sure I'm going to make a goose of myself. Will you hold my hand all the time?"
"Of course," said Betty, laughing unsteadily. "It's always hard to say good-bye to anybody you--you--like," she added, "but when they're going away to war and you may never see them again----"
"Please don't," begged Grace, squeezing her hand convulsively. "If you talk like that I just can't stand it, that's all. It wouldn't take very much----"
"All right, I won't do it again," cried Betty with forced gaiety. "Isn't that Mollie waving to us? Of course it is. Come on, Grace, I'll run you a race."
But Grace was in no mind to run a race, and Betty reached the meeting place alone, with Grace trailing in the rear.