For a moment the girls were startled, for it almost seemed as though
he were dead, but Betty put her hand on the ragged old shirt above the
heart and found that the action was strong and regular.
"Perhaps it is the very best thing that could happen to him," she said
softly, and, laying a light cover over him, tip-toed from the room,
followed quietly by Mrs. Irving and the other girls.
Once in the other room, with the need for action over, the girls felt
weak and spent, and it was only then that they realized that they had
been through a terrible ordeal.
In broken sentences they told Mrs. Irving all that had happened and as
she listened she grew more and more appalled at the risk they had run
and the danger they had gone through.
"Girls, girls," she cried when they had finished, "I was half wild
about you as it was. But if I had known the truth I think I should
have gone crazy. Just the same," she added and her eyes shone with
pride in them, "it was a glorious thing for you to do-- an unselfish,
wonderfully courageous thing.
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