For Chippewa, somehow, had fused.  Chippewa had forgotten sets, sections, cliques, factions, and parties, and formed a community.  It had, figuratively, wiped out the railroad tracks, together with all artificial social boundaries.  Chug Scaritt, in uniform, must be kept happy.  He must be furnished with wholesome recreation, fun, amusement, entertainment.  There sprang up, seemingly overnight, a great wooden hall in Elm Street, on what had been a vacant lot.  And there, by day or by night, were to be had music, and dancing, and hot cakes, and magazines, and hot coffee, and ice cream and girls.  Girls!  Girls who were straight, and slim, and young, and bright-eyed, and companionable.  Girls like Angie Hatton.  Girls like Betty Weld.  Betty Weld, who no longer sat against the wall at the golf-club dances and prayed in her heart that fat old Oakley wasn’t coming to ask her to dance.

Betty Weld was so popular now that the hostess used to have to say to her, in a tactful aside, “My dear, you’ve danced three times this evening with the Scaritt boy.  You know that’s against the rules.”

Betty knew it.  So did Chug.  Betty danced so lightly that Chug could hardly feel her in his arms.  He told her that she ran sweet and true like the engine of a high-powered car, and with as little apparent effort.  She liked that, and understood.

It was wonderful how she understood.  Chug had never known that girls could understand like that.  She talked to you, straight.  Looked at you, straight.  Was interested in the things that interested you.  No waist-squeezing here.  No cheap banter.  You even forgot she wore glasses.

“I’m going to try to get over.”

“Say, you don’t want to do that.”

“I certainly do.  Why not?”

“You’re—­why, you’re too young.  You’re a girl.  You’re—­”

“I’m as old as you, or almost.  They’re sending heaps of girls over to work in the canteens, and entertain the boys.  If they’ll take me.  I’ll have to lie six months on my age.”

Rudie was in charge of the garage now.  “That part of it’s all right,” Chug confided to the Weld girl.  “Only thing that worries me is Ma.  She hasn’t peeped, hardly, but I can see she’s pretty glum, all right.”

“I don’t know your mother,” said the Weld girl.

“Thasso,” absent-mindedly, from Chug.

“I’d—­like to.”

Chug woke up.  “Why, say, that’d be fine!  Listen, why don’t you come for Sunday dinner.  I’ve got a hunch we’ll shove off next week, and this’ll be my last meal away from camp.  They haven’t said so, but I don’t know—­maybe you wouldn’t want to, though.  Maybe you—­we live the other side of the tracks—­”

“I’d love to,” said the Weld girl.  “If you think your mother would like to have me.”

“Would she!  And cook!  Say!”

The Widow Weld made a frightful fuss.  Said that patriotism was all right, but that there were limits.  Betty put on her organdie and went.