who, this very afternoon, somehow got mixed up in the messy and dangerous business of shooting down a poor little Jap bomber. Perhaps you know who that WAC was.”

“Perhaps I do,” Gale agreed.

“That’s fine,” Isabelle beamed. “Let’s not mention her name.”

“We won’t,” Gale agreed. “But the colonel—how did he—”

“How’d he stand the storm?” Isabelle laughed happily. “How does he stand any storm? How did he stand defeat in Burma? How did he stand the long tough retreat? Like a man and a colonel, that’s how. And I don’t think—” the words came slowly—“I don’t think anyone is going to tell him how he is to use men and women under his command.”

“That,” said Gale, “is swell.”

Just then a miniature cyclone hit the place. That is to say Gale’s other roommate breezed in and with her was Than Shwe, the little Burmese nurse.

“Jan, this is our new roommate,” Gale said with a grin. Everyone who looked at Jan McPherson, the girl to whom Gale spoke, grinned. Jan was that kind of a person. More often than not she was grinning, as indeed she was at that moment.

“Oh! One more of us!” Jan exclaimed. “Golly! That’s swell!”

“She’s Isabelle Jackson, and what’s more, she’s the colonel’s secretary.”

“Oh, golly! The colonel’s lady!” Jan exploded.

Little Than Shwe was visibly impressed.

“I didn’t say the colonel’s lady. His yeoman—secretary!” Gale insisted.

“I’m sorry,” Jan apologized. “I was thinking of that poem, ‘Rosey O’Grady and the colonel’s lady are sisters under the skin.’”

“Probably they are,” Gale said. “But the people who sent us over here to help fight a war seem to think we’re all ladies and should be kept in a good safe place.”

“Good safe place!” Jan scoffed. “Who wants that! My Dad was an army sergeant most of his life. I was born under a truck in the rain. I’ve been on a truck or a jeep all my life, and I’m going to this war if I have to take a crew haircut, fake my identification papers and turn myself into a buck private.”

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