"Lay off! Lay off! Who done your bankin' last year? To-morrow's your day, less four bits for breakage. Speakin' o' breakage, if you drop your jacket, it'll bust. Watch out! That pint won't last you overnight. Layoff!" She reddened immediately, clapping her hand over the small protruding bottle in her pocket. She dared not return to her room, but sat out the night in a dark foyer behind a half-closed storm-door. No one found her out, and the wind could not reach her. Toward morning she even slept sitting. But the day following, weak and too soft for the lift, straining to remove the great dish-pan high with crockery from sink to table, she let slip, grasping for a new hold. There was a crash and a splintered debris--plates that rolled like hoops to the four corners of the room, shivering as they landed; a great ringing explosion of heavy stoneware, and herself drenched with the webby water. "O God!" she cried in immediate hysteria. "O God! O God!" and fell to her knees in a frenzy of clearing-up. A raw-boned Minerva, a waitress with whom she had had no previous word, sprang to her succor, a big, red hand of mercy jerking her up from the debris. "Clear out! He's across the bar. Beat it while the going's good. Your week's gone in breakage, anyways, and he'll split up the place when he comes. Clear out, girl, and here--for car fare." Out in the street, her jacket not quite on and her hat clapped askew, Ann 'Lisbeth found herself quite suddenly scuttling down a side-street. In her hand a dime burnt up into the palm. For the first time in these weeks, except when her pint or the evening beer had vivified her, a warmth seemed to flow through Ann 'Lisbeth. Chilled, and her wet clothing clinging in at the knees, a fever nevertheless quickened her. She was crying as she walked, but not blubbering--spontaneous hot tears born of acute consciousness of pain. A great shame at her smelling, grease-caked dress-front smote her, too, and she stood back in a doorway, scraping at it with a futile forefinger. February had turned soft and soggy, the city streets running mud, and the damp insidious enough to creep through the warmth of human flesh. A day threatened with fog from East River had slipped, without the interim of dusk, into a heavy evening. Her clothing dried, but sitting in a small triangle of park in Grove Street, chill seized her again, and, faint for food, but with nausea for it, she tucked her now empty pint bottle beneath the bench. She was crying incessantly, but her mind still seeming to revive. Her small black purse she drew out from her pocket. It had a collapsed look. Yet within were a sample of baby-blue cotton crêpe, a receipt from a dyeing-and-cleaning establishment, and a bit of pink chamois; in another compartment a small assortment of keys. She fumbled among them, blind with tears. Once she drew out, peering forward toward a street-lamp to inspect it. It clinked as she touched it, a small metal tag ringing. HOTEL LIBERTY 96