"Betty, oh, Betty!" cried Allen, leaning across the piano toward her, thrilling her with the new earnestness in his voice, "will you keep the home fires burning for me--so that when I come back--Betty, when I come back----" She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and held out a trembling hand to him. "There will always be one--waiting for you," she whispered softly. "Hello, folks!" They turned suddenly and found Will standing in the doorway. Then, such a welcome as they gave him! It made up to him for all these months when he had seemed to stand on the outside, looking in. "Come over to the fire and tell us all about it," Betty commanded. "Allen told us something, but we want to know the whole story--every little bit of a detail." Will fairly beamed and entered into the story with the greatest enthusiasm. "I really didn't do anything much," he finished modestly. "And at the end it was you girls that did all the work. I was just an 'also ran.'" "But, isn't there something you left out?" drawled Frank, pretending to yawn and gazing into the fire. "It seems to me----" "Gee," said Will, surprised at himself, "if I didn't really forget the most important part----" "Now what are you talking about?" cried Mollie, while the girls pricked up their ears and began to scent a new mystery. "What did you forget?" "Well," said Will, his eyes twinkling, and speaking with exasperating slowness, "do you happen to remember an eventful night on Pine Island, when Roy went to sleep----" "Aw, cut it out," grumbled Roy. "I guess I'll never be able to live that down." "Well, what about it?" cried Betty, at the limit of her patience, while the other girls looked threatening. "Please, Will----" "Do you happen to remember," drawled Will, "that on that same night you lost some jewelry?" "Oh, you found it!" they cried, fixing him with four pairs of bright, incredulous eyes. "Will, where is it?" "Some of it's here," he went on, pulling a small bag from his pocket and opening it carefully while they crowded around him, fairly smothering him in their eagerness, "and the rest of it's in the pawn shop. We found the tickets on him, though--" "My watch!" "My necklace!" "My lavallière!" "My pearl brooch!" These and other exclamations like them made such a babel of sound that the boys clapped their hands over their ears and looked at one another in comic dismay. This lasted so long that the boys had to pick up their caps and start for the door, before the girls consented to notice them. "Where are you going?" asked Betty, while the other three stopped talking long enough to look surprised. "We didn't think you'd miss us," said Roy plaintively. "So we were going away from here--that's all." "Now, who's a flock of geese, I'd like to know," laughed Betty, as they coaxed their neglected swains back to the fire. "We couldn't very well help being excited, could we?"