One evening I got back to the barracks late from a wood-gathering foray outside the walls. A light snow lay on the ground and it was hard to find the sticks and twigs with which a small stove was kept going in each room. Betsie was waiting for me, as always, so that we could wait through the food line together. Her eyes were twinkling. “You’re looking extraordinarily pleased with yourself,” I told her. “You know we’ve never understood why we had so much freedom in the big room,” she said. “Well—I’ve found out.” That afternoon, she said, there’d been confusion in her knitting group about sock
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