re you were right about
somebody else, if you couldn't read minds. But, then, there were rules
to go by, and all of the fine classes and textbooks that a social case
worker had to have. If you paid attention, and if you really wanted to
help people, Gloria supposed, it was all right. Certainly everything in
her own office seemed to run smoothly.

Not that she would ever do anything about another worker, no matter
what. Gloria remembered what Mr. Greystone, a teacher of hers had said,
a year or so before: "Never interfere with the case load of another
worker. Your sole job is represented by your own case load."

That was good advice, Gloria thought. And, anyhow, her assistance didn't
seem to be too badly needed, among the others. She had quite enough to
do in taking care of her own clients.

And here she was, wasting time! She shook her head and breathed a little
sigh, and began on the first folder.

Name: GIRONDE, JOSE R.

* * * * *

_Name: Wladek, Mrs. Marie Posner._ She was no fool. She knew about the
reports they had to make, and the sheets covered with all the details of
your very own private life; she had seen them on a desk when she had
come to keep her appointment. Mrs. Wladek was her name, and that was how
the report would look, with her name all reversed in order right on the
top. And underneath that there would be her address and her story, all
that she had told the case workers, set right down in black and white
for anybody at all to read.

When you were poor, you had no privacy, and that was the truth. Mrs.
Wladek shook her head. A poor old woman, that was all that she was, and
privacy was a luxury not to be asked for. Who said the United States was
different from the old country?

_Cossacks_, she thought. In the old country, one still heard the old
stories, the streets paved with gold and the food waiting for such as
yourself; oh, the war had not changed that in the least. Now the Voice
of America was heard in the old country--she had a letter, smuggled out,
from her own second-cousin Marfa, telling her all about the Voice of
America--and that was only another trap. They wanted to make you leave
your own land and your own country, and come far away to America and to
the United States, so that you would have no friends and you would be
defenseless.

Then you could not help yourself. Then you had to do what they asked
you, because there was no other way to eat. There