today they give us our special interviews and everything.”

“You’ll make it all right,” Betty assured her. “Just drink the rest of your coffee. That will pep you up.”

Once again Millie lifted her huge army cup. “Here’s to us all,” she laughed.

At that they clinked their cups and drank to their day that had just begun.

Mid-afternoon found Norma sitting at the end of a row of girls, waiting her turn at a private interview. In twenty-five open booths twenty-five interviewers sat smilingly asking questions in low tones of twenty-five new recruits, and carefully writing down the answers. In her row as she sat waiting her turn Norma saw Lena, the tall, strong girl who whispered strangely in the night, Rosa, who had flashed a light, Betty, Millie, and a few others.

As she waited—just waited—she began to be a little afraid. The interviewers were smiling, but after all, those were serious smiles. She could not hear the questions. She could guess them. These interviewers were asking, “What can you do? What would you like most to do? What else can you do?”

All of a sudden Norma realized that she had never done a real day’s work in all her life. She had always gone to school. Oh, yes! She could cook, just a little. But so little!

“I guess,” she thought, “that I’m what they call a typical American college girl, not a bad student, and not too good, fairly good at tennis and basketball. I’ve got brown hair and eyes, and I’m not too tall nor yet too short.” She laughed in spite of herself. “A good fellow, and all that. But,” she sobered, “what can I do? What do I want to do? What else can I do?”

She had felt a little sorry for the shopgirl, Millie. Now she envied her. Millie knew all about books and she could really cook. At this very moment, smiling with fresh-born confidence, Millie was stepping into a booth for her trial-by-words. And she, Norma Kent, a college graduate, sat there shivering in her boots! Surely this was a strange world.

The booth that Millie had entered was wide open. Norma could see all but hear nothing of what went on. At first she was interested in watching the smiles and frowns that played across Millie’s frank and mobile face. Of a sudden her interest was caught and held by the examiner. Tall, slim, looking very much the soldier in her neatly pressed uniform that bore a lieutenant’s bar on its shoulder, this examiner 

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