go to it and not bat an eye-lash—not outwardly, anyway.

But things is seldom as bad as you figure in advance—not even first-night performances. And the stuff which was actually put up to us was simple as a ordinary one-step. At least, it looked so from a distance. By distance I mean this: When the nursing instructor—a[Pg 47] lady in a white dress, with the darndest-looking little soubrette cap stuck 'way on the back of her head—when she stood up in front of the lot of us and put a Velpeau bandage—which is French for sling, I guess, and looks it—on one of the lady soldiers who was acting as mannequin, why, it looked easy.

[Pg 47]

While she was putting it on she handed us a line of talk something like that bird at the auto school, only not so fluent. And when she got through it was up to the rest of us to put the Velpeau bandages on each other. Gawd knows it was no cinch.

First, I set down, and a girl in uniform asked could she wrap me up. Well, it just naturally rumpled my Georgette blouse; but what's a blouse to a patriot? I let her go to it, and she done it so good and so quick that it was all over before I knew it, as the dentist says; and then it was up to me. Somebody give me a nice new roll of bandage and told me to get a model.

Well, I didn't have the nerve to ask any one, me being so new and the name Marie La Tour not meaning anything to nobody here. And so here was me standing round like a fool, not knowing how to commence, when up comes[Pg 48] that lady—her which had been so sloppy reading a book in the office.

[Pg 48]

"Can't I be your model?" she offered, and—believe you me—I could of almost cried, I was so glad to have somebody take notice of me.

I liked that dame more each time I seen her; she sure was refined. Even her sloppiness was refined—do you get me?

Well, as to real work, that sheaf of yellow papers up to the auto school had nothing on the bandaging game when it come to understanding it properly. Believe you me, that bandage had a will of its own, and the only way to make it mind would of been to step on it and kill it. But after a little I managed to tie up the lady pretty good, and before I was done I had my mind made up that Musette had lost her regular job and was going to be a bandage mannequin from that P. M. on until I got the hang of the thing.

Well, when the scramble of 

 Prev. P 19/141 next