“Or the colonel,” said Jan. “He’d be worse.”
An hour later they found themselves once more riding in the shadows of the Secret Forest.
They were met at the tent door by a tremendously excited Isabelle. “Come on!” she exclaimed. “Get cleaned up, quick! You won’t have much time for chow. Here! I brought you a huge can of coffee and I’ve made you some marmalade sandwiches. You’ll just have time to gulp them down and get into your costumes.”
“Costumes!” Jan exclaimed, catching Isabelle’s excitement,—“You mean uniforms, don’t you? Does the big push into Burma really start right now, and are we to go with the army? Oh! Glory be! Yippy!” She was fairly dancing.
“Who said anything about the big push?” Isabelle demanded. “And I don’t mean uniforms. I said costumes, and I mean our barber costumes.”
“Barber costumes! Oh! Good grief!” Gale sat down quite suddenly. “You don’t mean to say you brought those things along!”
“At the colonel’s request,” Isabelle nodded.
“But the colonel!” Jan exploded. “He never saw us do that skit back there at the Club in the city.”
“That’s what you think!” Than Shwe put in. “What the colonel doesn’t see isn’t worth seeing.”
“The colonel slid into a back seat the night of the Club entertainment when we did our Lady Barber Quartette feature,” Isabelle explained. “He liked it, so—”