“How about cooking Japan?” Jan asked.
“That will take time,” Isabelle laughed.
“My destination is Tokio,” said Gale, quoting Jimmie. “But I don’t expect to eat there. Instead, I hope to spoil Tojo’s dinner for him.”
“That’s the stuff!” Jan exclaimed. “By golly! That’s the stuff!”
Than Shwe threw back her small head with a merry laugh as she repeated,—“By golly, yes! That’s the stuff!”
An hour after dark they stole like fugitives from the Club. No noise, no confusion, no congratulations, no cheering. Truth was, very few knew they were going, and those few were faithfully silent.
“The army is not going now,” Isabelle confided to Gale. “Just a selected few of us to prepare the way.”
“A selected few,” Gale’s heart swelled with pride. To Isabelle she said, with a laugh, “We’ll make roads, build bridges, all that, I suppose?”
“All that!” Isabelle’s tone was impressive. “All that has been done. You’ll be amazed. Oh, no! I’ve never been there, but I can see it all the same.
“We’ll steal out of the city like ships going out to join a convoy,” she whispered as she and Gale climbed into the rear seat of Jan’s jeep. “There’ll be a dozen cars in our section,—the colonel, his guard, and a few others. A convoy of trucks will leave by another road. Other cars will strike out by themselves. In the end, when we’re a hundred miles on our way, we’ll discover that there are quite a lot of us after all.”