“Now,” she said, closing the window. “You and I had better change clothes, Janet. And we’ll have to make it snappy.”
“Yes—and oh dear—” Janet was slipping off her dress—“I’ve got so much to talk about. You can’t realize what a horrible time I’ve had—and then to find you, only to lose you again!” Janet was very near to tears.
“But you won’t lose me long,” Dorothy flashed her a comforting smile as she got out of her own dress. “Meanwhile, you’ll have Howard. He’s waiting on the roof, now. And Ashton Sanborn says he can clear up this business in a few days.”
“You certainly are wonderfully brave to do this for me,” sighed her cousin. “If Mr. Sanborn hadn’t insisted that by changing places with you I’d be really helping the government, I couldn’t allow you to do it. As it is, I feel I’m cowardly to go through with it—”
“Why, you’re nothing of the sort,” Dorothy protested. While Janet talked and they both undressed, she watched her cousin’s mannerisms, storing away in her memory, for future use, every gesture, and inflection of the voice so like her own.
“Who’s who?” she giggled, and now her tone was softer, an exact duplication of Janet’s manner of speaking.
Her cousin smiled. “In our undies,” she admitted, “even I am beginning to wonder if I’m not seeing double and talking to myself. How about shoes and stockings, Dorothy?”
“Chuck ’em over, Janet, we’d better do it up right. I sp’ose most of your things are packed in that wardrobe trunk over there?”
“Yes. I packed it this afternoon. You’ll find some handkerchiefs and gloves in the top bureau drawer. I left the trunk open on purpose. When Mr. Lawson comes, you might be putting them in—it would help to make things natural.”
“Right you are—that’s a good idea.”