“Dumb bloke—no! He’s only had that job a few days.”

“Surely you’ve heard from him since he left,” said Mabel, not without an acid flavor in her tone.

“You bet! But I thought if he was around this way I might get a chance to see him again.”

“May as well put him out of your mind,” Nancy suggested.

“Gal, if my hunch is right we won’t be doing any dating till we get through some maneuvers ahead of us,” said Mabel.

Toward sunset it began to look as though Mabel’s hunch had some material foundation. They turned off the paved highway and bumped for five miles over a rutted clay road before they entered a swamp made shadowy by the Spanish moss that hung from the oaks, cypress and sweet gum trees. Though the nurses were tired after their long day’s travel, Nancy and Mabel exchanged satisfied glances.

“Say, gal,” whispered Mabel. “Looks like they’re preparing us for the real thing.”

“We’ll sure have to sleep under nets down here or there won’t be any snoozing,” said Nancy.

The sun had already gone down, leaving a red glow in the west, when the convoy circled a clearing in the swamp where there was a small tent village already set up. The passengers climbed out gratefully, each nurse loaded with her personal baggage.

Lieutenant Hauser called the roll and assigned four girls to each tent. The tents were numbered, so the nurses hurried off to see what their new homes were like.

“Four cots and that’s all!” exclaimed Mabel, the first to reach number four, their new habitation.

Nancy’s heart had taken a dive when she learned that Tini and her former room-mate, Ida Hall, were to share the tent with Mabel and herself. Had this been prearranged by Major Reed, she wondered? She certainly had no desire to continue serving as a day and night watchman for Tini Hoffman.

“Must think we’re made of cast iron,” complained Tini when she tried out her cot.

“But here are mattress cases,” said Nancy. “We can stuff ’em with Spanish moss from the trees and make grand mattresses. We used to do that when Dad took us fishing in the river swamp.”

“Not a bad idea,” agreed Ida.

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