" He didn't lose anything in that fiasco, did he?" Robert asked, wiping his pen nib carefully with a square of felt."No, not really, except for his fa...th in President Grant, but it scared him, scared a lot of people I suppose." She put her darning in her lap."Everybody who bought gold anyway. Glad we were too poor to get involved." He took a deep breath. "There's the total, the five-year total." Very impressive," she said. "I'll just check your arithmetic." She hoped he did not mind, but she. There was still a significant ‘tent’. Oscar still didn’t know what to say. I prompted him again, “Well?” “I… I got Friday off and left early today. I… I wanted to surprise you, and help you get all packed up.” “Huh.” That’s all I had. “I was so looking forward to seeing you, my dear.” Thomas must have been confused. He can’t have known what to expect, but not this. Oscar was almost behaving as if Thomas were not there at all, let alone that he’d just found me and Thomas taking a shower. You were absolutely right. At the time I thought we were doing the right thing. After seeing what happened afterward in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, it should be obvious to everyone we were doing the right thing.” She looked into Brad’s blue eyes and felt her heart roll over as she added, “The mission of the army is to kill people and break things. I hope you did a good job of it.”“I came out of it with a little hardware,” Brad admitted.“Like what?” she persisted.“The DSC, Silver Star and Purple. Seth said that I should just let that happen and walk around naked but I told him to get real and that it was never going to happen.After another hour or so searching through every shop that we could find with zero success Noah suggested that we try the main lingerie shop in town.“I’m not going to the Ball in a bra and knickers even if they do look like a bikini, besides, we’d have trouble finding any small enough for me, the same problem as bikinis.”“Not if you get side tie ones.” Seth.