Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/233

Rh recruiting station, he could not mistake it. His head was swimming with heat and weariness, he could hardly lift his feet; people stopped and looked strangely at him, but  he pressed on. The flag was still flying, a bluejacket was standing on the step, the door  was open, he was in time.

The sailor held out a hand to help him as he stumbled over the threshold, but Billy  shook it off. What he was about to do he was going to do alone. Inside a uniformed officer was sitting behind a desk; he, too, looked up  anxiously as he caught a glimpse of the boy’s  exhausted face, and half rose to aid him. Mutely Billy shook his head; he did not want assistance. He held to the back of a chair and stood up very stiff and straight before the  desk.

His throat was queer and sticky and his lips so dry that at first he could not speak. When at last the words came, they sounded strange in his own ears, even though he had  rehearsed them a hundred times as he came  along the road.

“I want to enlist in the Navy,” he said.