Camp Follower: The Trip Out; Room Hunt

by BARBARA KLAW

I

LIKE most wartime residents of Washington, D. C., I knew Union Station well. I knew it as a place that one must fight through onto an uncomfortable train in order to get somewhere. It was strictly a means to an end for me, and I had always dreaded the process of shoving, waiting, and dodging. On the evening of April 1, however, when I caught the “Jeffersonian ” to leave Washington for good, I loved the whole familiar, dull procedure.

At the train gate I waited longer than usual, a whole hour, and the waiting mob packed me in more solidly than I had ever been packed. But thestation building seemed lofty and exciting, and I enjoyed every minute of the waiting.

When the train gates finally opened, I lugged my bags down the length of the platform, smiling at the sprinting soldiers who flashed by me. I was even amused, for a change, when I found my car was, as usual, the last and most bedraggled of a long line of bedraggled coaches hooked on behind a gaudy, streamlined engine. The steward showed me to my chair, which turned out to be stuck in a permanently reclining position, and I tipped him lavishly and settled back to look around me.

The people who milled through the aisles were soldiers carrying their small canvas bags, businessmen weary after a day of priority seeking, and women in flowery spring hats. The confusion was considerable, as all the seats in the car were reserved, and finding the numbers on them entailed unbuttoning and peering under the railroad company’s neat white antimacassars.

I speculated who among this crowd was to be tny seat companion for the next day and night, hoping it wouldn’t be the particularly imperious lady with two fur coats over her arm who was haggling with her porter; hopeful that it might be the stocky soldier wrho reminded me of my brother-in-law as he lazily searched for his seat. But I didn’t spot the girl who, it turned out, was to sit next to me, until, with a flurry of tweed coat, slim high heels, and baggage, she plumped down beside me.

I caught a glimpse of exceptionally white skin, red hair under a white turban, and curiously reddened eyes, and then she turned her head away.

Suddenly, as though realizing that, for better or worse, we wTere to be together for the next twentyfour hours, she looked at me and smiled, and I noted that she had a pretty face, made up of individually unpretty features. She introduced herself as Tracy Mead, told me she was a government worker, and offered me a st ick of chewing gum. In less than thirty minutes, I was showing her a picture ol my husband.

He had sent me the picture — taken at one of Camp Hickory’s quick photo places — saying: “The only backdrop they had, honey, was a cutout ol a large, fat man in a bathtub. It 1 had had my head attached to his body in the approved manner, it might have been a better picture, at that.”

The picture showed him standing so straight that he seemed to lean over backwards, and his new GI cap was obviously too big. But it was my only photograph of Spencer in uniform, and I had shown it to a surprising number of people.

“Gosh,” Tracy said. “He’s a good-looking boy. Has he been in long?” I explained that he had been drafted six weeks before.

“And you’re going out to live with him while he’s in training?”

“I’m going lo live as close as possible, 1 said.

Tracy said she was taking two weeks annual leave from her government job; and knowing how difficult it is for government workers actually to get those days of leave that pile up on paper for them, I asked her how she had managed it.

Immediately 1 realized I had asked the wrong question, for tiny red veins began to appear under her white skin, and I thought she was going to cry. She pulled a telegram out of her purse and handed it to me.

Even before I read it, the blurry stars stamped at the top told me that it was a death notice. It was her brother, killed on a high-tension wire. She had been called home for the funeral.

Either by determination or by the process of confiding in someone, Tracy’s distress seemed to be wiped away. My condolences were clumsy, but Tracy seemed grateful, and she chatted with nervous animation about her brother, her home, and her parents. Her face softened when she told me about her fiance, an aviation cadet who was stationed at an air base near her home in Texas.

“After the funeral,” she said, “I think I’ll sneak in a visit to him. And, you never can tell, lie may just decide 1 should stay. It certainly wouldn’t break my heart to leave Washington.” She showed me her picture of him, which was as bad as mine of Spencer, and I was equally polite.

Within an hour wre had exchanged addresses, traded cigarettes, and were friends. We compared Washington experiences, groused mildly about the bureaucratic annoyances of our particular agencies, and groaned over housing conditions.

“I like Washington all right,” Tracy said, “but gee, it costs such a lot to live there. Why, I didn’t even have a fur coat when I came, and you know, there are so many places that you just feel funny going to if you don’t have a fur coat.”

We stopped talking about ourselves to watch two lieutenants squirming in their scats across the aisle. They had had to put their suitcases under their feet because the baggage rack had already been stuffed with duffel bags when they boarded the train. Now they were trying to find some comfortable way to fit bot h feet and bags into the limited space. I glanced at the two soldiers behind them — the owners of the duffel bags — who were watching the pantomime. One of them winked.

Tracy giggled and stretched her legs.

“1 hope those gold braids are going a long way,” she said. “They’ll get mighty uncomfortable sitting like that. It’s good for them after the way they march around Washington like little tin gods.” Tracy’s enjoyment of their discomfort was based on six months of working for the War Department.

2

TRACY had already had dinner, so I set out alone to walk the gauntlet of soldiers between our car and the diner, trying not to grin at their whistles.

Standing cramped in the little entrance hallway to the diner, dodging back and forth to let the hurried but imperturbable waiters get glasses out. of the cabinets, I waited a good hour. A slight and elderly private talked to me with excessive politeness, and a drunken sailor, who was pocketing glasses every time the cabinet was opened, reeled around me.

“I’m just back from the Solomons,” he said. “Furlough, fifteen-day furlough. Have a glass.” I didn’t want a glass, so he pocketed that one, too. “Just in case,” he said. They made stiff lumps under his snug uniform. With a mild blocking movement, the courtly soldier got between the sailor and me, and bowing slightly from the waist, he introduced himself and asked me to have dinner with him.

It turned out that Itaska — the town I was headed for — was twelve miles away from where his wife lived. He wrote out her address for me — forming his letters with the same slow care he used in talking and eating. Later that evening, he found me in my seat, and wanted me to read his wife’s latest letter. She was a devout woman, who had turned to God completely when he had gone, he told me.

“She’s very fine, very Christian,” he said. “She’s just the finest little wife in the world.” I saw pictures of her and his children. The letter, full of stilted intimacies, embarrassed me as though I had broken into their bedroom by mistake, and I knew my smile was growing stiff on my face. It was a relief when he left.

Tracy and I had no luck getting into the club car. A soldier who Avas also trying to get in braced himself against the jolting of the train and talked to us.

“So you’re going to Hickory,” he said. “Your husband must be in the Signal Corps.” 1 said he was. The soldier shook his head. “Hickory’s a hell hole,” he said. “What’s he doing out there?” I explained that he was in radio school.

“That’s O.K.,” the soldier said. “ He’ll get a good technical rating out of that. That’s the best thing to get in the Army.”

“Better than being an officer?” i asked.

“Hell, yes,” he said. “ What does an officer know? When you’re a technician you can tell your officers which end’s up.”

“Do you like the Army?” I asked.

“Guys don’t like the Army,” he answered soberly.

“They’re just in it. It’s all right for what it is. I get mighty tired of these damn uniforms, though.” He brushed Ills hand impatiently against his pants, and then grinned.

“Hell, I wish I had a wife,” he said. “The Army’d be all right that way.”

“Do you think it’s a good idea to go out and live near my husband?” I was fishing for assurance.

“What else?” the soldier said. “It’s a wonderful break for a guy.” I could feel my face getting red with pleasure.

The lights were out in the coaches when we started back to our car, and we fumbled our way down ihe aisles, brushing against out flung arms and feeling our way from ehairback to chairback. When we found our seat, Tracy went right to sleep, curled like a pretzel in her chair. She tended to uncurl during the night, but she didn’t wake when I carefully extracted an elbow that drifted over into my ribs.

I went to the washroom early in the morning, stepping over a sleeping soldier who was lying across the doorway like a watchdog. It took a long time to get into the diner again, and I found the sailor with the bulging glasses under his blouse waiting there, too. He appeared to have been there all night. He wanted us to have a good-morning drink, and he pulled out innumerable glasses, polished them neatly with his handkerchief, and offered them to the hungry crowd. Not to be outdone, a few male civilians took him up on it.

We got into St. Louis about four, two hours late, just in time for me to board my train for Kansas City. Tracy — who had to wait over between connections— saw me off, and I waved to the slight, redheaded figure on the platform, knowing that we’d probably never see each other again.

3

MY NEW train was a streamliner—not only the engine but also the coaches — clean, slick, and comfortable; and my car was almost ent irely filled with civilians, who haven’t the gift of making themselves at home on trains as soldiers do. It was like stepping back to peacetime — no chatter, no moving around.

The Kansas City station reminded me oi Washington, and after spending ten nickels calling hotels for a room, 1 began to feel that the housing situation must be about the same, too. The soldiers and girls who had settled down on the station benches for the night, sleeping obliviously, seemed to have hit on the only solution. But wanting a bath and aching for a chance to take my shoes off, I decided to try the Travelers Aid.

“Well, I think we can get you a room in a nice little family hotel,” one of the women at the booth said. “Would that be all right? It isn’t, fashionable, but it’s very clean.” I said I’d settle for anything which included a bathtub, and she clinched it with a telephone call.

Her real concern for my comfort amazed me. I remarked on it to some cheerful sailors who shared my cab from the station.

“You got a room through what?” one of them asked.

“Through the Travelers Aid,” 1 said.

He apparently didn’t understand the nature of the Travelers Aid.

“Look, girlie,” he said, drawing out his wrallet. “I can lend you some money. I know how it is to be broke.”

He probably would have given it to me, too, though I was in fact so loaded down with cash and American Express checks that it almost scared me. Much to my embarrassment, when the cab stopped to let me off, the sailor took one look at my “little family hotel” and repeated his offer.

It was certainly the tiredest-looking establishment I’ve ever been in. It looked like a cross between the Y.W.C.A. and one of the better flophouses. But ihe lumpy bed seemed heavenly and I went right to sleep.

In the station next morning, I began to run into the society of wandering Army w ives in whose company I was to spend the next few months. Lugging baggage, tired and lonely, but all excited, they wrcre going to see their husbands, some for a visit, some for as long as possible. They were mostly young, mostly well dressed, mostly attract ive. That morning there were hundreds of us congregated in the Kansas City station.

We stood in front of the train gate, jockeying for position, waiting. It isn’t only the men in the Army who get used to waiting — the Army wives get used to it, too. Waiting in train stations, waiting for husbands who may be scouring pots in the mess halls and can’t let us know. In time I was to learn the art of waiting —of stretching out little tasks and insignificant thoughts.

The slacks-clad girl I sat next to on the train was weary. Two days on trains, a night spent in the Kansas City station “with a hell of a nice bunch of sailors,” had done the trick. She had been visiting her husband for a week at Camp Lisle, “certainly the most godforsaken spot on the globe,” she said.

“I stayed at the guest house,” she told me. “There isn’t a town anywhere around. You can’t imagine that place. The men weren’t allowed to come up to our rooms, and you had to hide in a telephone bootli to kiss your husband good night. I finally left before I had to. My husband said he was getting frustrated.”

1 hoped it wouldn’t be that bad at Hickory.

The car I was in was filled with wives going to Itaska or Gladwyn, a smaller town closer to the camp, to visit their husbands. One girl was balancing a bakery box. “She’s carried that cake all the way from Oregon,” a girl told me. Another girl was holding a young baby, and was heavily pregnant with her next.

In the car ahead of us were a number of selectees, branded by their lack of insignia, their new-looking uniforms, and the bald look of fresh GI haircuts. We saw them trooping back and forth to the diner, led by a sergeant. They seemed young and subdued and a little frightened, like freshly sheared sheep being led to a sheep dip. 1 remembered everything my husband had told me about that trip, and 1 felt unexpectedly teary watching them. We all became silent as they filed through the car, and then giggled, embarrassed by our solemnity, when they were gone.

In four hours, we reached Itaska and T took a cab to the Wilbur Hotel, where I was staying. There was a waiting line at the desk. I had a reservation, but after hearing the clerk with well-exercised sympathy turn away person after person who also thought he or she had reservations, I grew nervous.

“We may have a cancellation later,” was the standard brush-off. “Just have a seat. We’ll call you.”

A tall, imperious woman of about forty, casually wearing mink, fought for her rights like the younger wives.

A double for Colonel and Airs. Thompson,” the clerk repeated after her. He searched for the reservation and found it. “Twin beds, Mrs. Thompson?’ he asked, in the brisk unconcerned way in which male drugstore clerks cater to intimate feminine needs.

“No,” she said firmly. “A double bed, please.” The girl behind me nudged me.

Luckily Spencer’s reservation had stuck, and I got into my room with no trouble. 1 was left to wait until evening, when he would arrive. I lingered over an indifferent sandwich as though it were a filet mignon. I bought a washcloth in the five and ten cent store, and kept the clerk an unnecessarily long time explaining Missouri’s state tax system to me. I wrote letters, bathed, napped, and finally allowed myself the luxury of dressing.

When I had finished everything 1 had to read, had listened to voices in the hall until my stomach was churning with excitement, I went down to the lobby.

There the scene had changed. No longer cool, quiet, and subdued, it was mobbed with soldiers and it hummed with voices. The revolving door never stopped revolving, the seats were all taken, soldiers circled around the desk and the entrance to the cocktail lounge four deep. They came so fast, and they looked so much alike in their standardized clothes, that I grew panicky, and hurried back to my room. So many women were sitting in the lobby, twisting their handkerchiefs, with their eyes glued to the door, searching each face. Back safely in my room, I remembered what a girl had told me.

“It’s a shock when you first see your husband,” she had said. “In strange clothes, and talking somehow differently. And the worst thing is that they even look different.” I sat on the bed, staring at the door, half ready to laugh at myself, half ready to cry. Finally I went into the bathroom to comb my hair— and at that moment Spencer arrived.

My stomach settled into place, and my life as a camp follower was under way.

4

I FOUND the Travelers Aid office in Gladwyn, Missouri, sandwiched between a drugstore and a cleaning establishment, at the top of a flight of echoing wooden steps.

I had already been room hunting for two hours that morning, ever since my bus from Itaska landed me in town. But 1 had found nothing but advice, freely given by friendly home-owners who had no vacancies. All of them had told me to go to the Travelers Aid — the official L!SO housing agency.

The office was mobbed with girls when I went in. The girl at the desk was talking to a small blonde with a husky, brown-eyed little girl at her side.

“How was that, place on Wood Street you looked at?” she asked.

“Same story,” the mother said. “She didn’t want kids. Patty scares ‘em all, don’t you, baby?”

“I’m an awful nuisance,” the little girl said mattcr-o f-factly.

“You’d think it was a sin for a soldier’s wife to have a child,” the mother said.

“Well, it makes it tough, all right,” the worker agreed. “I may have something this afternoon, though, Airs. Huston, Drop in then, will you?”

We all wanted the same thing, and we were all told that there might be some vacancies reported by afternoon. Each newcomer was urged to live in Itaska, andeaeh felt, asl did, that it was too far from camp. I lit a cigarette, sat down, and lingered after the others had gone, hating to hit the pavements again. I introduced myself to the girl at the desk, who was calm and efficient and pleasant. Her name was Margaret Lewis.

A soldier came in — red in the face, and obviously in a hurry.

“Can I leave a message here?” he asked. “I imagine my girl will come by here sooner or later. Her name’s Lydia.”

“Certainly,” Margaret said. “What’s the message?”

“Just tell her to leave my hat here — that I’ll be in to pick it up later.”

“All right. What’s her last name?”

The soldier thought a moment.

“Lydia, Lydia something. It begins with a P. Lydia Pinkham,” the soldier said. “Thai’s it Lydia Pinkham.”

Margaret looked up at him. “You re sure? she asked.

The soldier grinned. “No,” he said. “But it sounds familiar. Anyway, she’s got my hat. dell her for God’s sake that it isn’t funny, and I’ve got to get that hat back. I’ve been dodging MP’s all day.” Margaret wrote the message on a pad, with the “Lydia Pinkham” underlined.

“Don’t forget my message now,” the soldier warned, and he rushed out, his GI shoes clattering on the wooden steps. Margaret filed the message under P in her message file.

Just then the phone rang. Margaret wrote as she listened, and then said: “Yes, certainly 1 will, Mrs. Upton. Thanks so much for calling us.”

“You might try this one,” she said. “I don’t know what it’s like, but it’s a vacancy, at least. She won’t be home till four, so try after that. Let me know what happens, will you? The woman has refused to rent the room to the last five girls I’ve sent over.” She didn’t explain further than that, and I took the slip eagerly.

On the way out I passed a girl sitting on the stairs, holding one of her shoes in one hand and rubbing her foot with the other. “Lord, this town!” she said crossly. “My feet’s killing me.”

My feet were killing me, too, in another two hours. Margaret had told me that I might try the cabin courts on the edge of town, and with a mental picture of setting up housekeeping in a cozy little one-room house, I trudged out to look at them.

They were clustered on the main highway entering Gladwyn, interspersed with diners, groceries, the town’s bowling alley, and the Army Prophylactic station.

The station was a clean, square little building, set back from the road, with a brightly painted sign reaching out to announce it. Over the door was a naked green light. Stop and go, I thought, all done in lights. Very neat.

Two of the cabin courts had “No Vacancy” signs up, but the third — advertising “ 10 cabins, all strictly modern, 10” — had two vacancies, I found, on digging the manager out from under a bed whore she was cleaning.

Her name was Mrs. Tiede (pronounced Tidy) and she showed me around her establishment proudly. “Now this one here,” she said, “is one of my very nicest. We’ve just remodeled it, too. Careful of wet paint.” The cabin was charming at first glance, with three large windows and baby-blue walls.

“And Venetian blinds,” she said, pulling them up and down rapidly. “I just got them up. They make it pretty, don’t they? They’re mighty hard to get nowadays.”

The bathroom was as spotless as the cabin, and almost as lacking in essential equipment. The furniture in the neat little room consisted of a bed, a straight chair holding an ashtray, and a small gas heater in one corner. There was no dresser.

“The girls that’ve lived in here have just made themselves right at home,” Mrs. Tiede said. “The last one brought a radio and a little bedside lamp, and it was real cute.”

“Where did she put her clothes?” I asked.

“Now, I don’t really know,” Mrs. Tiede said cheerfully. “ I guess she kept them in her suitcases.”

“Could I see the closet?” I asked.

“Well, as a matter of fact, we haven’t got around to putting a closet in this cabin yet, Mrs. I iede said. “Most of the girls hang up their dresses on those hooks there.” She pointed to two sagging hooks on the wall. She stood in the middle of the room, and looked around with satisfaction.

“It’s cute, isn’t it?” she said. I agreed that it was, and remembering the swarm of girls in Margaret’s office, asking for rooms — rooms of any kind — I asked the price.

“Well,” Mrs. Tiede said. “I used to charge sixteen a week for this one, but now with the Venetian blinds, I have to charge seventeen.” I multiplied quickly and found that the rent amounted to considerably more than we had paid for a whole apartment in Washington.

“Have you a cabin without the Venetian blinds?” I asked.

The next cabin — which cost only fifteen a week — had both dresser and closet, but Mrs. Tiede obviously looked down on it.

“ Of course, this one hasn’t just been remodeled, ” she said. It, too, was scrupulously clean, with orange and blue linoleum on the floor. I told her I wanted to look around a little more, but persuaded her to hold it for me until five, when I’d call. Fifteen dollars appalled me, but it was cheaper than the hotel in Itaska, and Gladwyn was closer to camp.

Talking about rents, I later asked Margaret if the OPA hadn’t ever noticed Gladwyn.

“Sure,” she said. “They came in here and clamped clown ceilings kind of indiscriminately, and people took their rooms off the market. Frankly, we were relieved when they went away. The cabin courts can’t be touched any way because they simply multiply their daily rate by seven to get a weekly rate. ”

5

I PATIENTLY covered whole streets of houses that afternoon, chatting with landladies and incumbent Army wives. The people were all friendly and talkative, but with one exception the answer was always no. The exception was a temporary room. I could have it for a week, the lady told me, but the couple, who had gone on furlough, would want it back after that. The room was eight dollars a week.

“I have a lot of girls here,” she said, leading me up the stairs, “When I first started renting, I put in a game room in the attic for them. This room is right off the game room.”

It was, as a matter of fact, hardly off the game room. A partition that reached not. quite to the top of my head cut off one corner of the large bare attic.

“The girls use the game room during the day, but it’s very private up here at night,” the landlady assured me.

“What about light:'” 1 asked, noticing none in the room.

“Well, 1 let the couple keep on the light in the game room,” she said, “and that gives them plenty. ”

She explained the by-laws of the house. “The bathroom’s on the first floor,” she said, “I don’t let the girls usemy kitchen — it just makes too much confusion, you know; and I don’t like any radios in the house. Also I don’t like smoking, but I don’t suppose you smoke, do you?” She didn’t wait for an answer, and I hid the slightly tobacco-stained two fingers of my right hand, and decided it would be good for me to give up cigarettes for a while anyway. I said I’d call her back that afternoon.

“Well, ” she said as I left, “I hope for your sake that you find something permanent, dear, but if not you can stay here while you look around.” It was phrased like an invitation — at eight dollars a week and no smoking.

As I went down the steps of the house, a cab coasting languidly along the street pulled up beside me.

“You look as though you’re room hunting,” the driver said. I told him I was. “Well, most all the girls in Gladwyn are, ” he said. He was a good-looking young man, and 1 involuntarily wondered — hating myself for the thought — why he wasn’t in the Army.

“I know of a nice room, ” he said. “Right on the square. Want me to take you there? I’m going that way, anyway. I won’t charge you.”

Thinking how extraordinarily nice all Gladwynians were, I said hopefully: “Do you really know of a room?”

“Sure,” he said. “Just like I said. A nice one.” “Look,” I said, ready to grab at any chance. “Could you give me the address, and I’ll go by there later. I want to finish up this street first.”

“Well, I can’t remember the address, but I could drive you right, t here. ” lie sounded a little devious. “Which side of the square is it on?”

“Come on, hop in, ” the man said. “It’d only take a minute in the cab. 1 refused, cursing myself for a suspicious fool when the young man shrugged his shoulders and drove away. But I was right, I discovered, when 1 talked to Margaret about it later.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve heard of that stunt. Those places on the square are colorful spots. That’s where most of the syphilis that the camp authorities have a fit about starts. I guess some of the cab drivers arc in cahoots with the houses.” I never saw a girl coming down the steps of one of the houses on the square after that without wondering.

By the time it was four, my feet and head ached, and I could feel a hole growing in the toe of my left stocking. As nervous as though I were looking for a job, I stopped in at the bus station, the only public place I knew, to clean up before going to the house that Margaret had told me about.

I walked over there — directed by my USO map of Gladwyn — with my head held stiffly, trying to keep the wind from mussing my hair.

A boy of high-school age answered the door, and I asked him if they had a room for rent.

“Have we got a room for rent, Mom?” he yelled back into the house. Ilis mother called him, and when he came back, he asked: “Did the USO send you?”

I told him that they had, and he moved a bicycle which partially blocked the door, and invited me in.

His mother, Mrs. Upton, was lying on a bed in the dining room in a housecoat and hair net, with cold cream on her face. “Excuse the way I look,” she said. “I just got back from work.” T could see that her hair was red-brown under her hair net, and her features wore handsome and energetic, but beginning to be blurred by lines and excess flesh. She quizzed me about where I came from, how long I wanted the room, and what my husband’s schedule was. 1 felt more and more as though I were job hunting.

Finally, I concluded I had passed the first inspection because she got up, walking as though her feet ached, and led me back into the room.

“It isn’t much,” she said. “But here it is.” The room, in the back of the house across from the kitchen, seemed almost too good to be true. It was light, with a real rug on the floor, a closet, dresser, double bed which sagged only slightly, a card table covered with a fresh cloth, and a private entrance, opening out onto a concrete porch on the side of the house. I told her I thought it was wonderful.

“Oh, it isn’t much,” she insisted, “but the girls always seem to like it.” We sat on the bed, with an ashtray between us, and talked it over.

“The girls here take care of their own rooms, and we all share the bathroom,” she said. “It’s right next door to this room. You use linen as you want; it’s in a cabinet in the bathroom. And it’s all live and let live. We’re just an ordinary family, an ordinary American family, and we do what we want and let other people do what they want.” A girl, younger than the 1 oy, and strikingly pretty, appeared in the doorway.

“Mother, is this dress all right to wear to the party?” she asked, after looking me over.

“You know it’s all right. Go on away, Patricia, ” Mrs. Upton said. She pronounced it Patreecia. A small dog came into the room, sliding between the girl’s legs.

“I hope you like dogs,” Patricia said. 1 assured her I did, and she disappeared.

“You use your own entrance,” Mrs. Upton went on, “and go your own way, and we’ll get along fine. The kids make a lot of noise, but we’re just ordinary people, and Mr. Upton and I work very hard.” 1 found my mind jumping to follow her transitions, and noticed that her voice carried just the edge of a whine.

Patricia appeared in the doorway again, just to look this time.

“Goon about your business, Pat,” Mrs. Upton said. “You know you’re just showing of!'.” There was a hearty yell from the next room.

“That’s Ralph, my son,” Mrs. Upton told me. “He’s just showing off, too.”

She asked me how long 1 had been in Gladwyn, and what I thought of it. I said I hadn’t seen much except the square and a few residential streets.

“You’ve seen it all,” she said. “All there is to see. That’s Gladwyn, the whole town. We aren’t natives, of course,” she added emphatically. “We come from St. Louis. But Mr. Upton is in business down here.”

“Oh, it’s a terrible mess, this town,” she exclaimed. “All these soldiers. I’m afraid for Patricia. I really am. I tell you I’m afraid to let her go out in the streets at night.” I shook my head sympathetically, wondering if all this meant that she was going to take me. She got up and walked over to the doorway, and I followed, ready to admire anything she pointed out. Clotheslines were laced across the porch, and concrete steps led into the obviously untended part of the yard.

“Now, you see those are your steps,” she said. I looked obediently at the steps.

“Did the USO tell you what I charge?” she asked. They hadn’t and she went on. “Well, I charge eight a week. I could get thirteen with this private entrance, thirteen dollars, but I wouldn’t want to take it from the girls.”

“Well,” I said, trying not to sound too eager. “I’d like to take it, if it’s all right.”

“Yes, it’s all right,” she said. “You’ll find we’re just ordinary people. When will you move in?”

I said, “Tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.”

“Sure, any time, any time,” Airs. Upton assured me. “I don’t give kitchen privileges, you understand. I’d like to, because I know it’s hard for you girls, but I just don’t want to make any more bother for the girl who works for me. Of course, as for coffee in the morning, that’s all right , and if you want to keep milk or beer in the icebox, well that’s all right, too. But I just can’t have cooking.”

Her ground rules sounded pleasantly lax, and I accepted them gratefully.

“Shall I pay you now?” I asked.

“Oh, now, any time, it doesn’t matter,” she said. I gave her the money, anxious to get it into her hands and have the deal closed. “We’ll count this as of tomorrow,” she said, fingering the bills expertly.

“Are you going to live here?” Patricia asked, this time all the way in the room.

“Yes, she is,” Mrs. Upton said. “Though what business it is of yours, I can’t imagine.”

“That’s swell,” Patricia said.

Ten minutes later, I went out of my own door, locked it after me with my own key, and walked down my own porch steps. I set off for the bus station where I was to meet Spencer, looking over the town with the newly possessive eye of a resident. I felt I had won a major victory.