“Sure do!” Nancy stuck a couple of straws in hers so hard they bent double.

“What’s wrong?” asked Mabel under her breath.

Nancy glanced warily at the couple across the aisle, nudged Mabel with her foot, and laid her finger cautiously on her lips before she placed the fresh straws in her glass.

Mabel wisely changed the subject, and remarked, “Cleansing tissues are sure hard to get now. Guess we’ll have to get all ours hereafter at the P.X.”

“We’ll need plenty to take across—if we get to go over.”

“Yeah, my friend Lydia, in North Africa, wrote me we’d better take along plenty of stuff like that.”

Suddenly Nancy was impatient to be through with their sodas and out of the drugstore. She meant to take no chances on suspects this time, but report what she had seen to Captain Lewis. She finished her soda in a hurry and reached to the back of the table for her purse.

“Let’s get going,” she suggested.

“Not till I finish the last spoonful of this ice cream,” Mabel said firmly. “I’d think about it regretfully every time I’m marooned somewhere on a desert over there.”

“Then I’ll go ahead and be paying.”

“What’s all the hurry?” Mabel wanted to know, an edge in her tone.

Out of the corner of her eye Nancy saw that the sleek gentleman across the aisle was watching them. Then she noticed that Tini’s attention had wandered sufficiently from her companion to recognize them.

“Hiya!” she said with a proud toss of her head, which plainly showed her personal triumph over their dateless condition.

Nancy returned the greeting and led the way out. When they were on the street, Mabel slipped her arm through Nancy’s and inquired, “What’s wrong? You acted as though you were sitting on nettles.”

“Nettles would have been mild to the prickles I felt.”

“What do you mean?”

“That man with Tini looked exactly like the one who was with the blond corporal I told you about on the train.”

“Oh! So that’s why you thanked me in German?”

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