"I'm nearly a month back on my room rent. I'm in a bad hole, but I could get along with ten." "Oh, make it fifteen," Harry said. "Girls always need money for ribbons and ice-cream sodas." "That leaves fifteen for us, Harry," Levine wailed. "It's what I call a dog's life." "Oh, cheer up." Moore pocketed the fifteen dollars. "Come on up to Sherry's for lunch.--It's on me." Linking his arm in Levine's, he led him, still grumbling, out of the office. Mary Ames sat down heavily in a chair and began to cry. "If I wasn't so ugly," she said, "I'd just like to kiss those boys." She shook the tears out of her eyes and jerked her chair up towards Yetta's desk. "I know you think I'm a sentimental old flop--crying like this. You're always so calm. But I can't help it. You might think I'm discouraged--rushing round all week begging money, and every Saturday morning having to come in and tell the boys I've failed--that I haven't enough to pay their salaries. But it isn't discouragement that makes me cry, it's just joy! I wouldn't have the nerve to peg through week after week of it if it wasn't for being the ghost on Saturdays. It's those two boys, Levine always grumbling and Harry Moore making jokes. And--I know--sometimes they don't have enough to eat. And you ought to see the hole they sleep in!" Her lips began to twitch again, and perfect rivers of tears ran down her cheeks. "I wish I could stop crying. But it's just too wonderful to work with people like this. I've been a bookkeeper in dozens of offices--everybody selfish and hating each other and trying to get on. I've seen so much of the other. It's hard for me to believe in this. "I don't know much about Socialism," she went on. "I ain't educated like you young people; I haven't read very much. Keeping books all day is all my eyes are good for. But I just know it's right. If it wasn't the real thing, there'd never be a paper like this. How can you sit there so calm and cold and not cry? It's the biggest thing in the world, and we're part of it." Yetta put her arms about the older woman. "I love it, too," she said. "But it doesn't make me cry. Somehow it's too big for me. It matters so little whether I'm part of it or not. It would go on just the same--if I wasn't here. It isn't mine. I could cry over a little baby--if it was mine. But not over this--" She was surprised to find that her tears were contradicting her words. Once started, it was hard to stop. It seemed very sad to her that a young woman of twenty-three should have nothing more personal to cry over. CHAPTER XXIX WALTER'S HAVEN