And Jackie was squeaking simultaneously, "How did you do it, Gloria? How did you do it? Tell us quick!"
Gloria clicked her tongue around inside her mouth and suddenly she was grinning with the four front teeth outside her lips. It was a macabre and horrible grimace. Another click and they were back in place.
"You stinker, why didn't you tell us before?" Sally asked, pushing her fingers against the flat little nose that made her look so much like a pug dog.
"I was saving it," Gloria said. "It's my Deed so I can help with the initiation. Will it do?"
"Okay with me." Sally nodded violently.
"What happened to your teeth anyhow?" Erna asked.
"I lost 'em in the blitz. We got bombed out the night before Mummy was going to take me to the country." Gloria rubbed the tip of her tongue over her teeth. "I don't know how I ever used to put up with my own teeth. These are ever so much more useful."
"Daddy sent me back to America before the blitz," Sally said enviously. "I was in Detroit the whole time."
"Alphabet soup!" Gloria cried as plates were put in front of them. "The last letter left in the soup is the initial of the man you're going to marry. Mine is always X. Imagine marrying a man whose name begins with an X! At the last school I was at there was a girl who lost an eye in the blitz, and she had a glass eye she used to take out whenever she got in a row; she'd hold it in her hand and the mistress could never go on rowing her properly. But I think she used to carry it too far. One day at dinner the mistress at the table was rowing her about something and she took her eye out and put it in her glass of water. Now I call that too much. She was heaps of fun, though. She got kicked out the same time I did."
"You got expelled!" Jackie exclaimed. "Ooh, what did you do, Glo?"