The words were whispered in a foreign tongue. Norma was mildly shocked at hearing them whispered here in the night.
“She was talking in her sleep,” Norma assured herself as the girl settled quietly back in her place. Then it came to her with the force of a blow. “She too might be a spy!”
“What nonsense!” she chided herself. “How jittery I am tonight! I’ll go to sleep. And here’s hoping I don’t dream.”
She did fall asleep, and she did not dream.
From some place very, very far away, a bugle was blowing and someone seemed to sing, “I can’t get ’em up, I can’t get ’em up. I can’t get ’em up in the morning.” Then an alarm clock went off with a bang and Norma, the WAC recruit, was awake.
Her feet hit the floor with a slap and she was putting on her clothes before she knew it. A race to the washroom, a hasty hair-do, a dash of color to her cheeks and, twenty minutes later, together with thirty other raw recruits, she lined up for Assembly.
It was bitter cold. A sharp wind was blowing. A bleak dawn was showing in the east. Norma shivered in spite of her thick tweed coat. She looked at the slender girl next to her and was ashamed. The girl’s lips were blue. Her thin and threadbare coat flapped in the breeze. She wanted to wrap this girl inside her coat, but did not. This would be quite unsoldierlike. So she stood at rigid attention. But out of the corner of her mouth she said:
“It won’t be long now. Those soldier suits we’ll wear are grand.”
“It wo-won’t be-be long!” the girl replied cheerfully through chattering teeth.
Norma permitted herself one quick flashing look to right and left. To her right, beyond the slender girl, stood the tall girl who had whispered so strangely in her sleep. Wrapped in a long black fur coat she stood primly at attention. There was something about this girl’s prim indifference to those about her that irritated Norma.