As they entered, a girl in the nobby blue uniform of a WAVE said:
“Take the ladder to Deck Two. Turn to the right and there you are.”
“Yes,” Sally said to Nancy, with a sharp intake of breath, “there we are. Right in the midst of things. Some sharp-eyed examiner will probe our minds to find out how much we know, how keen we are, what our motives for joining up were, and—”
“And then she’ll start deciding what we can do best,” Nancy broke in.
“And if she decides I’ll make a good secretary to an Admiral,” Sally sighed, “I’ll wish I hadn’t come. Well—” She took a long breath. “Here we go up Fortune’s ladder. Wish you luck.”
“Same to you.” Then up they went.
In the meantime the big girl, Barbara, opened her bag, shook out her clothes, packed some away in a drawer, hung others up, then dropped into a chair for a few long, long thoughts. The truth was at that moment she wished she hadn’t come.
She thought of the steam laundry where she had worked for three years. All the girls laughing and talking, the fine clean smell of sheets as they ran through the mangle, the rattle and clank of machines and the slap of flat-irons—it all came to her with a rush.
“It’s all so strange here—” she whispered. “Go down the ladder, that’s what she said. What ladder, I wonder?”