ly, I hope we can go through a lot more trouble
together. There's plenty of it ahead."

She felt proud and meek and dismally happy. She squeezed his big hand
again in both of hers and sighed, with a smile:

"I hope so."

Then he pressed the buzzer, and Miss Gabus was inside the door with
suspicious promptitude. Davidge said:

"Mr. Avery, please--and the others--all the others right away. Ask
them to come here; and you might come back, Miss Gabus."

Mr. Avery, the chief clerk, and other clerks and stenographers,
gathered, wondering what was about to happen. Some of them came
grinning, for when they had asked Miss Gabus what was up she had
guessed: "I reckon he's goin' to announce his engagement."

The office force came in like an ill-drilled comic-opera chorus.
Davidge waited till the last-comer was waiting. Then he said:

"Folks, I've just had bad news. The _Clara_--they got her! The Germans
got her. She was blown up by a bomb. She was two days out and going
like a greyhound when she sank with all on board except six of the
crew who got away in a life-boat and were picked up by a tramp."

There was a shock of silence, then a hubbub of gasps, oaths, of
incredulous protests.

Miss Gabus was the first to address Davidge:

"My Gawd! Mr. Davidge, what you goin' to do about it?"

They thought him a man of iron when he said, quietly:

"We'll build some more ships. And if they sink those we'll--build some
more."

He was a man of iron, but iron can bend and break and melt, and so can
steel. Yet there is a renewal of strength, and, thanks to Mamise,
Davidge was recalled to himself, though he was too shrewd or too
tactful to give her the credit for redeeming him.

His resolute words gave the office people back to their own
characters or their own reactions and their first phrases. Each
had something to say. One, "She was such a pretty boat!" another, "Was
she insured, d'you suppose?" a third, a fourth, and the rest: "The
poor engineer--and the sailors!" "All that work for nothin'!" "The
money she cost!" "The Belgians could 'a' used that wheat!" "Those
Germans! Is there anything they won't do?"

The chief clerk shepherded them back to their tasks. Davidge took up
the telephone to ask for more steel. Mamise renewed the cheerful
_rap-rap-rap_ of her typewriter.

The shock that struck the office had yet to rush through the yard.
There was no lack of messengers to go among the men with the bad word
that the first o