“Oh, I see.” Ida’s manner showed she didn’t like Tini any more than most of the others.

“You surely can’t accuse him of trying to pick me up,” Tini flared, fully aware of the implications in Ida’s remarks, following so close on that lecture. “He encouraged me to come into the ANC. In fact he was the very one who suggested it.”

“You must have made a hit with him,” put in Nancy, “to have him come all the way over here to see you.”

Tini looked pleased, and toyed with her blond curls before she said, “Well, you see he’s a traveling salesman and gets around.”

“Huh, he must be luckier than most if he can still get gas to be a traveling salesman,” commented Mabel.

“Oh, he uses the trains. His territory is too wide for a car in these times.”

Nancy smiled disarmingly as she asked, trying to seem casual, “Dating him tonight?”

“If he can arrange his business so he can be back in the village.”

There was no more time for probing, for their instructor, Sergeant Fuller, was calling them to attention on the pine-clad hill where they had already received their preliminary instruction in putting on and taking off their gas masks. The structure of the masks had been explained in detail, and a lecture given on the various types of gas, and how to care for gas casualties.

This morning, however, came their first really difficult test. They had to go through the gas chamber, as they called the little house on the hill where the tests were made.

“Gosh, I’ll sure be glad when this is over,” moaned a small, brown-eyed girl, Grace Warner, whom they had dubbed “Shorty.”

Grace actually looked no more than sixteen and wore her hair with a bang-bob which made her round, childish face seem even more immature. Her voice, too, had a thin, babyish quality. Though the nurses teased her quite a bit, she was a general favorite.

Shorty was between Nancy and Mabel when they lined up for the gas-chamber test. Her big brown eyes were apprehensive as she looked at Nancy and said, “If we could go through there once and have it over with I wouldn’t mind so much. But three times—gosh!”

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