country. "Katie--"
she choked--and the country of make-believe fell palely away.

But they did not speak of the things they had stirred.

That thing of not saying it had been established the day Ann's bank
account was opened. Katie had been "over the river," as she called going
over to the city. Upon returning she found Ann up in her room. She stood
there unpinning her hat, telling of an automobile accident on the
bridge--Katie seldom came in without some stirring tale. As she was
leaving she rummaged in her bag. "And oh yes, Ann," she said, carelessly,
"here's your bank book. I presumed to draw twenty dollars for you,
thinking you might need it before you could get over. Oh dear--that
telephone! And I know it's Wayne for me."

But she did not escape. Ann was waiting for her when she came back
up stairs.

She held out the book, shaking her head. Her face told that she had been
pulled back.

"Not money," she said unsteadily. "All the rest of it is bad enough--but
not money. I'd have no--self-respect."

"Self-respect!" jeered Kate. "I'd have no self-respect if I didn't take
money. Nobody can be self-respecting when broke. None of the rest of us
seem to be inquiring into our sources of revenue, so why should you?"

As had happened that other time, in relation to the suit, the thing shot
out at Ann turned back to her. It had more than once occurred that the
thing thrown out sparingly persisted as thing to be considered genuinely.
Her browbeating of Ann--for it was a sort of tender, protective
browbeating--led her to reach out blindly for weapons, and once in her
hand many of those weapons proved ideas.

"We take everything we can get," she followed it up, forcing herself from
interest in the weapon to the use of it, "from everybody we can get it
from. We take this house from the government--and heaven only knows how
many sons of toil the government takes it from. I take this money we're
so stupidly quibbling about now from a company the papers say takes it
from everybody in reach. Take or you will be taken from is the basis of
modern finance. Please don't be fanatical, Ann."

"I can't take it," repeated Ann.

Katie looked worried. Then she took new ground. "Well, Ann, if you won't
take the sane financial outlook, at least be a good sport. We're in this
game; the money has got to be part of making it go. We'll never get
anywhere at all if we're going to balk and fuss at every turn. There now,
honey,"--as if to W