roof,” Sally mourned.

“There are two gable windows on each side of the attic,” Nancy said. “All you have to do is to get up to the attic. You can step right out on the roof from a window.”

“And I suppose you’re going to tell me you have a key to the door at the foot of the attic stairway?” Sally laughed.

“No, but I have quite a way with locks. I think it can be arranged,” said Nancy. “But, Sally,” she protested. “You’d think we were sweet sixteen and in a boarding school instead of grown young ladies sworn in to serve America—”

“We’ll serve America in a big way,” Sally insisted stoutly, “if only we get this secret short wave doing its bit. You just wait and see! And I’m going to get my connection with that aerial on the roof sooner than soon.”

CHAPTER FOUR DANNY DUKE MAKES A CATCH

The days that followed were busy ones. There were shots for typhoid, smallpox and all the rest, with many a sore arm.

They marched until their legs ached and their feet were sore, but all the time their officers were so kind and all their companions so friendly that it did not seem to matter.

Long hours were filled with classes. They learned history of the Navy from the beginning, a glorious story of which they could all be proud. Navy customs came in for their full share of discussion.

“Boy, am I glad I am getting this first!” Sally exclaimed one day. “Without it I’d be completely lost aboard a ship.”

“But we’re not sailing on a ship, at least not the way things stand now,” said Nancy.

“All the same we’re going in for Communications and you can’t communicate with anyone unless you speak his language,” Sally laughed.

“You’ve got something there,” Nancy agreed.

As for Barbara, besides her regular assigned work, she was taken to an airfield where paratroopers were being trained.

As she watched ten boys, one by one, slip from a captive balloon hundreds of feet in the sky, she exclaimed:

“Oh! I could never do that!”

When she saw the parachutes, white against a blue sky, come drifting down and watched the boys drop to the ground as if they were dead, then spring up laughing, she exclaimed:

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