"Oh," gasped Amy, holding on tight to the seat. "I have worse stage fright now than I did on the night we gave the sketch. Everything's so new and strange." "Well, what did you expect a strange city to be like?" asked Mollie practically. In what seemed to them scarcely a second of time they had stopped before a very pretty, homelike house, and a polite chauffeur was holding the door of the cab open for them. Still feeling as if it were all happening in a dream, they crossed the sidewalk and ran up the steps of the house. Before they had time to ring the bell a stout, middle-aged, motherly-looking woman opened the door and smiled down at them approvingly. "Well, well," she said, holding the door wide for them, "walk right in, young ladies, and make yourselves at home." "We expected you almost an hour sooner," she added, as the girls followed her into a big, cheerful front room. "I was rather afraid there might have been an accident on the road--there have been several lately." "No, we were simply delayed," replied Betty with her prettiest smile--winning the woman's affections then and there. "Part of the way we could have walked faster than the train moved, I think." "I'm Mrs. Watson," their hostess introduced herself a few minutes later, as she led the way upstairs. "Mrs. Barton Ross has no doubt told you I am representing the Y.W.C.A. here in Denton. I hope," she added, as the girls took off their coats and hats and "did things" to their hair, "that we are going to be friends." "We shall be," chorused the girls, smiling at her happily, "if we have anything to say about it!" CHAPTER XVII HELPING UNCLE SAM After dinner, the girls were taken over their new domain, and were enthusiastic about it. There were three big parlors where the boys could entertain their friends and relatives, also bedrooms enough to accommodate some score of people over night. "Of course, as you see, we're not nearly in shape yet," Mrs. Watson apologized, as they came back to the big front room. "There are still pictures to be hung, some draperies and odds and ends to be bought that will change the looks of the place entirely. It is with those things you girls can help me immensely, if you will." "That's what we came for," replied Betty quickly, while the other girls looked eager. "And besides, I think it will be a lark. Somehow, nothing seems half hard or strenuous enough to do for the boys that are giving up so much for us." "That's the spirit we like to see," said Mrs. Watson, looking at the girl's flushed face and shining eyes approvingly. "And it's the spirit," she added slowly, "that we see among nine-tenths of our girls and women these days. It's wonderful what we are accomplishing." "It's nothing to what our boys are going to accomplish when they get into the fight," broke in Mollie, her eyes big and dark. "My one regret is that I can't put on a uniform, and fight side by side with them."