. They were back in the same old world
with the same old sins and sorrows and selfishnesses, and unnumbered
new ones. And they had the habit of battle--the gentlest were
accustomed to slaughter.

It was not the Central Powers alone that had disintegrated. The
Entente Cordiale was turned into a caldron of toil and trouble. No two
people in any one nation agreed on the best way to keep the peace.
Nobody could accept any other body's theories.

Russia, whose collapse had cost the Allies a glimpse of destruction
and a million lives, was a new plague spot, the center of the world's
dread. While the people in Russia starved or slew one another their
terrible missionaries went about the world preaching chaos as the new
gospel and fanning the always smoldering discontent of labor into a
prairie fire.

Ships were needed still. Europe must be fed. Hunger was the
Bolshevists' blood-brother. Unemployment was the third in the grim
fraternity.

Davidge increased his force daily, adding a hundred men or more to his
army, choosing mainly from the returning hordes of soldiers.

When Mamise at last had left the hospital she found a new ship
growing where the _Mamise_ had dwelt. The _Mamise_ was at the
equipping-dock, all but ready for the sea, about to steam out and take
on a cargo of food to Poland, the new-old country gathering her three
selves together under the spell of Paderewski's patriotic fire.

Mamise wanted to go to work again. Her strength was back and she was
not content to return to crochet-hooks and tennis-racquets. She had
tasted the joy of machinery, had seen it add to her light muscles a
giant's strength. She wanted to build a ship all by herself,
especially the riveting.

Davidge opposed her with all his might. He pointed out that the dream
of women laboring with men, each at her job, had been postponed, like
so many other dreams, lost like so many other benefits that mitigated
war.

The horrors of peace were upon the world. Men were driving the women
back to the kitchen. There were not jobs enough for all.

But Mamise pleaded to be allowed to work at least till her own ship
was finished. So Davidge yielded to quiet her. She put back into her
overalls and wielded a monkey-wrench in the engine-room. She took
flying trips on the lofty cranes.

One afternoon when the whistle blew she remained aloft alone to revel
in the wonder view of the world, the wide and gleaming river, the
peaceful hills, the so-called h