“Right here is where I forget this Gothic architecture, the shady walks, the cozy nooks that help to make this big school what it is,” Sally said, as a look of determination spread over her face. “I’m going to work and study day and night, for we are in the Navy now.”
“I’m right behind you,” Nancy agreed. “All the same, when this terrible scrap is over, I’m coming right back here and be a regular student as long as I please. And believe me, I’m going to have all the trimmings—class dances, proms, shady walks and all the rest.”
“Shake on that.” Sally held out her hand. That handshake was a solemn ceremony.
“And now to business.”
From that time on their heads were bent, for long hours, over study desks, radios, clattering keys.
Their day was not done when darkness fell, nor their week when Saturday rolled round. They did not, like Barbara, hide under the covers to study with a flashlight when night came. They rented bicycles for the entire period of their stay at the university. On many a night farmers saw strange lights winking and blinking from one hill to another in their pastures. Sally and Nancy were practicing the light-blinking code they had studied that day. Twice they were reported as spies, but nothing came of it for they never returned to the same pasture twice, and it would have been a fleet-footed farm boy who could have rounded them up in the dark.
Saturday afternoon, armed with dozens of multicolored flags, they returned to these same hills to practice flag signals. White and blue with a notch in the end stood for A, blue, white, red, white and blue in stripes was C, and so on and on to white with a red spot for one, blue with a white spot for two, and so on.
With good memories and a zeal for learning seldom witnessed by those gray stone walls, they went through the school in record time and were once more on the move.
“Now we’re really going to work,” Sally cried, enthusiastically.
“Yes, and at one of the biggest air bases on our long seacoast,” Nancy agreed.