They dream of life, and of its fullness.

What did fate have in store for her?
Sometimes she crimsoned, sometimes she paled as she looked ahead.
Bare-armed, her heavy sport skirt caught up with pins, her bonny brown hair loosely coiled, thick golf stockings and sturdy shoes covering her legs and feet, she presented a figure that caused more than one heart to thump, more than one head to turn, more than one pair of eyes to follow her as she went about her work.

Her cheeks and throat and breast and arms were browning under the fire of the noonday sun, her eyes glowed with the fervour of enthusiasm; her voice was ever cheerful and her smile, though touched with the blight that lay upon the soul of all these castaways, was unfailingly bright.

And when she returned "home" at night from her wageless day of toil, she slept as she never had slept before.
Her aunt worked in what was known as the salvage corps.

She was one of the clerks employed in checking out the cargo and other materials seized by the committee of ten, as the leaders in this singular enterprise were called.