chair for a few long, long thoughts. The truth was at that moment she wished she hadn’t come.

She thought of the steam laundry where she had worked for three years. All the girls laughing and talking, the fine clean smell of sheets as they ran through the mangle, the rattle and clank of machines and the slap of flat-irons—it all came to her with a rush.

“It’s all so strange here—” she whispered. “Go down the ladder, that’s what she said. What ladder, I wonder?”

Then she jumped up. She would have to get out of here, begin to face things. What things? Just any things. If you faced them, they lost their terror. They stepped to one side and let you by.

After putting on her hat and coat, she opened the door to stand there for a moment. Truth was, she was looking for the ladder.

“Hi, there!” came in a cheery voice as a girl in a natty blue suit and jaunty hat rounded a corner in the hall. “You’re one of the new ones, aren’t you? Close the hatch and let’s get down the ladder for a coke at the USO.”

“The ha-hatch?” Barbara faltered. “What’s a hatch and where’s the ladder?”

“Right down—oh!” the girl in blue broke off. “I forgot. Of course you wouldn’t know. You see, we are WAVES, you and I—”

“Yes, I—”

“So this place we live in is a ship, at least we say it is. This is not the second floor but the second deck. The door is a hatch, the walls bulkheads and, of course, the stairway is a ladder.”

“Oh!” Barbara beamed. “That’s the way it is!”

Of course Sally and Nancy had not boarded a ship for their interview. The “U.S.S. Mary Sacks” was a two story building turned over by the college to the WAVES. And it was up a stairs, not a real ladder, that the two girls climbed. It was all a part of the program that was to turn girls from all walks of life into sailors.

“Your name is Sally Scott?” said a girl in a WAVES uniform.

“That’s right,” said Sally.

“Come into my parlor,” the girl said, smiling, broadly and indicating a small booth furnished with two chairs and a narrow table.

“‘Said the spider to the fly.’” Sally returned the smile as she finished the quotation..

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