Project Gutenberg 2025-06-30 Public domain in the USA. 227 Ruck, Berta 1878 1978 Onions, Oliver, Mrs. Onions, Mrs. Oliver Ruck, Amy Roberta Caswell, Edward C. 1879 1963 Caswell, E. C. (Edward C.) 16023626 The girls at his billet $aNew York :$bA. L. Burt Company, $c1916. Al Haines "The Girls at His Billet" by Berta Ruck is a novel written in the early 20th century. Set on England’s east coast during wartime, it blends romantic comedy and home-front life as three spirited sisters under a strict aunt find their dull village transformed by an army training camp and the arrival of a billeted young officer. Narrated by the sharp-tongued youngest sister, the story promises flirtations, clashes, and shifting loyalties as khaki invades their “hen-party” household. The opening of the novel follows Elizabeth (“Rattle”), her sisters Evelyn and Nancy, and their aunt in the dreary village of “Mud Flats” as news arrives that troops will be billeted locally. Rattle cleverly maneuvers her aunt into accepting an officer, and after much excited preparation and card-fortune “omens,” Second-Lieutenant Frank Lascelles turns up early, overhears Rattle’s cheeky “Billet Boy” talk, and sparks instant mutual antagonism—though he charms everyone else. Daily life fills with training scenes, ration details, and his irrepressible presence, while a tall, quiet officer named Curtis and another, Masters, are invited to a small supper. After a brief sisterly truce, Rattle finds a “new interest”: secretly answering a newspaper ad from a “Lonely and Unpopular Subaltern,” penning a candid, sympathetic letter that hints at her own isolation and sets up a parallel thread to the household’s khaki tensions. (This is an automatically generated summary.) https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.319510020053711&seq=11 20250624202527ruck 1916 US Reading ease score: 81.3 (6th grade). Easy to read. en Young women -- Fiction Love stories Sisters -- Fiction Soldiers -- Fiction Aunts -- Fiction World War, 1914-1918 -- Great Britain -- Fiction PR Text Category: Historical Novels Category: Romance Category: Novels Category: British Literature 498849 2025-07-30T08:06:05.180329 text/html 461516 2025-07-04T05:49:44 text/html 582974 2025-07-30T08:06:11.329322 application/epub+zip 589322 2025-07-30T08:06:06.004341 application/epub+zip 247666 2025-07-30T08:06:05.571298 application/epub+zip 731401 2025-07-30T08:06:15.530261 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 711724 2025-07-30T08:06:10.929262 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 457159 2025-07-30T08:06:03.530323 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 427503 2025-07-04T05:49:44 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 15619 2025-07-30T08:06:15.699246 application/rdf+xml 12290 2025-07-30T08:06:05.677316 image/jpeg 2228 2025-07-30T08:06:05.624296 image/jpeg 516584 2025-07-30T08:06:05.230304 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia