It was nearly an hour before Cavvy and McBride returned, but it was an hour well spent in washing dishes and tidying up generally. It is just possible that this job might have been put off till morning but for the fact that the entire crowd was spending the night here and needed every inch of room. The clearing up had hardly been finished before the two boys were heard outside kicking the snow from their feet. A moment later they entered.
“Greatest news you ever heard,” exclaimed Cavanaugh at once, stripping off his mackinaw and hanging it on some horns to dry. “Jack’s going over!”
“What! Right away?” inquired several voices at once.
“Yep. He starts the first thing in the morning. His Colonel’s had word that the regiment will be a month longer wherever they are in France before going to the front, so he’s sending four or five men who were left behind to join it. Jack’s about crazy with joy.”
“I should think he would be,” remarked Steve Haddon slowly. “It must have been tough having all the others go without him. I’d hate it, I know.”
No one answered him directly. At the further end of the room the youngsters were raucously disputing over sleeping places, but on the four or five older scouts gathered before the fire a sudden, thoughtful silence had fallen. A year from now where would they all be! Scarcely together as they were to-night. Presently Cavvy caught Steve’s eye and his arm dropped across the other’s shoulder to rest there with a faint pressure.
“So should I,” he agreed. Then he smiled. “Steve, old scout,” he went on briskly, “we’ll have to enlist together when we go and maybe they’ll put us on the same ship. Meantime— Hanged if I’m not hungry again! Let’s see if we can’t dig up some cold turkey.”
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
- Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.
- Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.
- Left unsolved the identity of the enigmatic “Stafford” who speaks two lines but otherwise comes and goes unnoticed.
- In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)