a
letter to go and an answer to come.

"Meet 'em face to face; that's me!" he declared at last. "I think I'll
just take a trip to the little old capital m'self. I can tell the rest
the c'mittee I'm goin' to put a few things up to some them Senators
and Congersmen. That'll get my expenses paid for me."

There simply was nobody that Jake Nuddle would not cheat, if he
could.

His always depressing wife suggested: "Supposin' the lady says she
ain't Mamise, how you goin' to prove she is? You never seen her."

Jake snarled at her for a fool, but he knew that she was right. He
resisted the dismal necessity as long as he could, and then extended
one of his most cordial invitations:

"Aw, hell! I reckon I'll have to drag you along."

He grumbled and cursed his fate and resolved to make Mamise pay double
for ruining his excursion.

CHAPTER V

For a time Marie Louise had the solace of being busy and of nibbling
at the edge of great occasions. The nation was reconstituting its
whole life, and Washington was the capital of all the Allied peoples,
their brazen serpent and their promise of salvation. Almost everybody
was doing with his or her might what his or her hand found to do.
Repetition and contradiction of effort abounded; there was every
confusion of counsel and of action. But the Republic was gathering
itself for a mighty leap into the arena. For the first time women were
being not merely permitted, but pleaded with, to lend their aid.

Marie Louise rolled bandages at a Red Cross room presided over by a
pleasant widow, Mrs. Perry Merithew, with a son in the aviation, who
was forever needing bandages. Mamise tired of these, bought a car and
joined the Women's Motor Corps. She had a collision with a reckless
wretch named "Pet" Bettany, and resigned. She helped with big
festivals, toiled day and night at sweaters, and finally bought
herself a knitting-machine and spun out half a dozen pairs of socks a
day, by keeping a sweatshop pace for sweatshop hours. She was trying
to find a more useful job. The trouble was that everybody wanted to be
at something, to get into a uniform of some sort, to join the
universal mobilization.

She went out little of evenings, preferring to keep herself in
the seclusion of the Rosslyn home. Gradually her fears subsided
and she felt that her welcome was wearing through. She began to
look for a place to live. Washington was in a panic of rentals.
Apartments cost more than houses