then I’ll step out!” snapped Tini, when she had been reprimanded the third time. “I can’t do anything to please you.”

“You’ll stay in ranks and keep trying till you do it correctly,” Lieutenant Carson stated. “Or else!”

After that the girl stomped about like a spoiled child, making the dust fly over those around her. Nancy wondered why she was here at all if she had not come in the spirit of cooperation with the training program.

“Too much silly falderal,” she heard Tini say in a low tone when the formation broke up. “I came in to nurse the sick, not to do a lot of crazy drilling.”

That afternoon Tini was close to Mabel and Nancy when they were jumping some hurdles. Nancy’s long legs swung easily over the first two, but the last took all the ability she had. Tini, however, didn’t even try to go over the last, but quickly ducked under when the instructor wasn’t looking.

“Go back, you cheat!” snapped Mabel. “We’re not going to have any duckers-under in this unit.”

Mabel’s bluntness attracted the attention of Lieutenant John Warren, who was putting them through this phase of their training. He called out good-naturedly, “Now, now, young lady! You have to take it over the top, you know.”

Tini knocked down the bar twice before she finally made that last hurdle. She scraped her chin the first time she hit the gravel. When their instructor was out of hearing she gave him some back talk, and continued to grumble while she crawled parallel with Nancy and Mabel under some lengths of chicken wire.

Nancy was sure her palms had as much earth on them as skin when she finally came triumphantly through on the other side. “Boy, what an experience!” she burst forth, when she got up to brush herself off.

“Just imagine how much faster we could do it, if the Japs were using the soles of our G.I. shoes for target practice,” Mabel reminded her.

“There’s just no sense in all this,” complained Tini, wiping her gritty palms on her coveralls.

Nancy didn’t like this girl, nor her attitude, and found she couldn’t keep silent any longer.

“Looks as though you’d better get out of this right now,” she snapped. “If I understand the reason for all this, it’s for our own good—to prepare us for real trials to come if we’re sent into the fighting areas.”

“Mind your own business,” snapped Tini like a spoiled child. “I’ve got a right to blow off if I want to.”

She stalked on to the next test. Here they were required to swing by a rope down the side of a ravine. Nancy and Mabel followed slowly, and Mabel said, “If they keep her on she’ll get our unit into trouble, sure as life.”

“I doubt if they keep her with such an attitude.”

“She griped like that all the way through nurse’s training,” Mabel explained.

“Oh, was she in your class?”

“Yes. We came here together, too. You have to hand it to Tini, though. She has a keen mind and makes grand marks. They had no grounds for turning her down, I suppose.”

“She makes me feel as uncomfortable as those suspects on the train did.”

“Yeah!” agreed Mabel. “There’re more ways of working against Uncle Sam than outright sabotage.”