“No, steam laundry. I know you’ll think I was silly, but just out of high-school I went into a laundry to work. I’ve never done anything else.”

“You liked it, of course, or you wouldn’t have stayed.”

“Yes, I like the nice, clean smell of the shiny white sheets and pillow cases, and the cozy, warm feeling of everything. I like to run the sheets through the mangle, fold them just right, then run them through again. I like to stack them up, just right, in clean white piles.

“Oh, I guess I’m hopeless,” Barbara sighed. “Just an old hag of a laundry worker. What can the WAVES do with a creature like that?”

“You’ll be just wonderful!” her companion beamed.

“Won-wonderful!” Barbara stared.

“Sure! They’ll make a parachute rigger out of you.”

“Parachute rigger? What’s that?”

“You know that all fighting airmen wear parachutes, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course!”

“And that those parachutes often save their lives, in fact, have already saved thousands of lives?”

“Yes, but—”

“Parachutes don’t just grow on trees like walnuts. They have to be made with great care and arranged with greater care. The rigger is the one who packs them into their bags.”

“Oh! I’d love that!”

“Sure you would. And it’s a tremendously important job. One slip is all it takes. If a parachute is folded wrong, some fine fellow comes shooting down, down, thousands of feet to his death. But you—you love to do things just right, even bed sheets.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then you’ll be the best there is. Good parachute riggers are hard to get. Of course,” Belle went on, “you don’t just fold parachutes and pack them. You select large ones for large people.”

“And small ones for small people!”

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