y of an
extra-dry life. There was a time when cleanliness was accounted as
ungodliness and the Christian saints anathematized the bath as an
Oriental pollution. During our war of wars there was a vast amount of
helpless holy living.

Exquisite gentlemen kept to their clothes for weeks at a time and grew
rancid and lousy among the rats that were foul enough to share their
stinking dens with them. If these gentlemen were wounded, perchance,
they added stale blood, putrefaction, and offal to their abominable
fetor.

And women who had been pretty and soapy and without smell, and who had
once blanched with shame at the least maculation, lived with these
slovenly men and vermin and dead horses and old dead soldiers and
shared their glorious loathsomeness.

The world acquired a strong stomach, and Mamise's one skip-bath day
must be endured. If the indecency ever occurred again it will be left
unmentioned. Heaven knows that even this morning she looked pure
enough when she was dressed.

Mamise found that Polly was still in bed, giving her damaged ankle as
an excuse. She stuck it out for Mamise's inspection, and Mamise
pretended to be appalled at the bruise she could almost see.

Mamise remembered her plan to go abroad and entertain the soldiers.
Polly tried to dissuade her from an even crazier scheme than
ship-building, but ended by promising to telephone her husband to look
into the matter of a passport for her.

Despite her best efforts, it was already twelve-thirty and Mamise had
not left the house. She was afraid that Davidge would be miffed. Polly
suggested telephoning the hotel.

Those were bad days for telephoners. The wires were as crowded as
everything else.

"It will take an hour to get the hotel," said Mamise, "another hour to
page the man. I'll make a dash for it. He'll give me a little grace, I
know."

The car was not ready when she got to the door. The engine was balky
and bucky with the cold, and the chauffeur in a like mood. The roads
were sleety and skiddy, and required careful driving.

Best of all, when she reached the bridge at last, she found it closed
to traffic. The Potomac had been infected by the war spirit. In sheer
Hunnishness it had ravaged its banks, shearing away boat-houses and
piers, and carrying all manner of wreckage down to pound the old
aqueduct bridge with. The bridge was not expected to live.

It did, but it was not intrusted with traffic till long after the
distraught Mamis