“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Brookman. “Your mother sent you here to broaden your horizons. So, uh, broad. Er, broaden. Go cook.”

“It’s very broadening,” said Miss Macy in her usual dreamy tone. Miss Macy could be elated about anything because facts and real life never got in her way. “Oh, the stews I have known! The chilies! One word of advice, dear,” she said, grabbing Gladys’s arms confidingly, causing Gladys to back across the room and into a wall. “Make bread your friend!”

“Yikes, keep her away from me,” said Gladys, who had airs but no social graces.

“Run along and pack your things. You can start immediately. We must give our all for the military effort.” Mrs. Brookman had her by the shoulders and was practically shoving her in the direction of the living quarters.

“I don’t see how being a cook for some farmer is helping the military,” said Gladys.

“Farmers are the backbone of the nation,” said Miss Macy. “They grow the food for our boys overseas.”

As if to punctuate this, Miss Macy came to attention with a clicking of heels that would have been smarter had she not been wearing orthopedic shoes. She saluted, necessitating everyone saluting back. Which gave me an idea.

“We’ve got the military on our property!” I said.

Of course, no one paid any attention to me, but something of what I said must have penetrated Sina’s realm of grown-up consciousness because she said, “You’ll never guess, but on our property we have troops stationed in barracks. The soldiers just walking all over the place.”

“I’ll pack my bags,” said Gladys. She turned and went through the curtained doorway and upstairs to get her things. A minute later she was back wearing high heels that would last about two seconds on the farm and lines drawn down the back of her legs the way girls did when they couldn’t afford nylons. Only Gladys’s were squiggly and badly drawn, so it looked as if her nylons were sagging and she needed to pull them up. I was to learn that this was a trademark of Gladys’s from her appearance to her cooking: everything was kind of randomly half-done as if she could do better but couldn’t be bothered. She dragged a heavy suitcase behind her.

“I hope I can impress upon you that my duties can’t be tooooo taxing?” she said to Sina, using her fake snooty accent again as we walked out to the truck. “I need lots of time for my mystical fine tunings?”

Gladys climbed into the cab of the truck to sit on the upturned milk can that we used for a passenger seat and Winifred, Wilfred, Zebediah, and I climbed into the back.

“Your what?” asked Sina.

“My mystical fine tunings? I’m a psychic?” she said. Gladys dropped the snooty accent and took up the equally annoying habit of ending all her sentences on a high note as if they were questions. I was busily punctuating them in my head, and I wanted to give her a short lesson in the art of the declarative, but I knew Sina was itching to do it herself. Of course neither one of us would be so rude.