"Good for you, Flip," Erna cried. "You can't play if you're going to cheat, Glo."
"It's Erna's turn next, anyhow," Jackie said. "By the way, Pill, I think it's a dirty shame Hauser made you drop skiing."
"Me too." Erna nodded so violently that her hair came out of the barette and she had to fasten it again.
Flip thought of the progress she had already made on her skis, and smiled to herself. Then she shrugged, "Well, if she thinks I'm too impossible to teach, I guess that's that."
"The old minge, the mangy old minge," Gloria muttered. "I say, Pill. What're you going to be when you get out of this place, an artist?"
Flip nodded. "I'd like to be. The way my father is. I'd like to paint portraits and do illustrations for children's books." She reached wildly for the jacks' ball, which was this time an old golf ball Gloria's mother had sent, but it bounced off the table and Erna scrambled after it.
"At last," she said, bringing it back and collecting the jacks. "I'm going to be a doctor like my father. I think it must be wonderful to cut people up and put them back together again." Underneath her joking words Flip could tell that she was serious.
"The trouble is that you can't always put them back together again," Jackie said.
"I will." Erna swept up her jacks with a confident gesture. "If people have their legs and things blown off I'll discover a way to put them back or give them new ones off dead people."
Flip started to tell Erna that Paul wanted to be a doctor too, but Gloria, who didn't mind when she herself talked about glass eyes or false teeth, put her hands over her ears. "Oh, stop! Stop!"