seemed just what Norma hoped in time to become—a real soldier.

“She’s not too young—perhaps thirty,” the girl told herself. “And she’s wearing some sort of medal pinned to her breast. Say! That’s strange!”

And indeed it was strange. The Woman’s Army Corps was as yet very young. Only a few had gone overseas and none, as far as she knew, had either won honors or returned to America.

“She’s keen,” she whispered to the girl next to her.

“Who?” The girl stared.

“That examiner,” Nonna nodded toward the booth.

“Oh! Oh sure!” The other girl resumed polishing her nails.

“All the same she is,” Norma told herself. “And I’d like to know her.”

As Millie, the shopgirl, at last rose from her place, a happy smile played about her lips.

“She made it,” Norma said aloud. “And am I glad!” She smiled at Millie as she passed.

Lena, the “night whisperer” was next to enter the vacated booth. As the interviewer began her task her body appeared to stiffen.

“On her guard,” Norma thought. “I wonder why.”

On the officer’s face there was still a smile, but somehow it was a different sort of smile.

And the tall girl? She too seemed rather strange. She appeared always on her guard. “As if she were speaking a piece and feared she might forget,” was Norma’s thought.

Still, in the end all must have gone well for, as she passed her on the way out, the tall girl flashed Norma a look that said plainer than words. “See? That’s how you do it.”

Whatever may have been Norma’s reactions to this they were quickly lost, for suddenly she realized that the black eyes of the examining officer were upon her and that her name was being called. Her time had come. Swallowing hard, she rose to step into the booth.

“You are Norma Kent,” said the examiner, flashing her a friendly smile. “And your home is—”

“Greenvale, Illinois,” was the prompt reply. The date of her birth, when she entered and left 

 Prev. P 8/146 next