on the way to the hospital; and Jim was still moaning over being poisoned by the alligator and getting blood all over the place, and the car just relined and everything! I didn't say a word just then, because, of course, you must stick to a pal in time of immediate trouble—do you get me? But I was boiling mad inside, though worried a little about the poison. Still, Jim's not hitting that bird, Von Hoffman, was worse to me than death itself.

At the hospital the chauffeur and me got Jim inside somehow and to a desk in the hall. There was a snappy-looking nurse sitting there with a book, and our coming in at that hour no more worried her than a fly in cold weather. She just looked up quiet and spoke—sort of unhospitable.

"Name of ailment?" she inquired.

"Alligator bite!" I told her, brief; and I will say this got her goat a little, because she made me say it twice more before she would believe me.

Then she directed us down a long hall, and a young guy in a summer suit of white duck stopped reading the newspaper long enough to give Jim's nose the once over.

"No cause for alarm," says this bird. "The nose will be about twice its normal size for a day, that's all!" All! And, as if that wasn't enough, he painted the nose and all round it with some brown stuff, which stopped the bleeding but made Jim look like he was made up for some sort of comedy act. Jim was perfectly sober by then and quit talking about poison, and etc., and when he was back in the limousine I just let myself go and bawled him out good and plenty.

"Now see here, Jim," I says, "I've stuck by you to-night long enough to make sure you ain't goin' to die or nothin'; and now I'm through!"

"You been just fine, Mary," says Jim, trying to take my hand. I took it away quick.

"You don't get me!" I says. "I mean I'm through for keeps. The engagement is broken, and everything!"

"Whatter yer mean—broken?" says Jim, sort of dazed.

"Just that!" I snapped. "Here you get tight and take a insult from a German; and, as if that wasn't enough, you go farther and get bit by a pro-German alligator! And you don't even offer to fight the German who owns the alligator, either! And, what's furthermore, you've got your face swoll up so's you won't be able to dance to-morrow night; and that iodine won't wash off; and the act is crabbed in the bud—do you get me? Crabbed! And I'm through—that's all! So don't never come near me again!"

Believe you me, Jim tried to make me listen to reason; but I couldn't hear no reason to listen to, and so wouldn't let him say much. Then Jim got mad and bawled me out for breaking my rule and going on the party, and by the time we got to my place we wasn't speaking at all—not even good night or good-by forever!

II

For hours and hours after Ma got me to bed I just lay there thinking and aching and feeling all hot and ashamed and terribly lonesome, and with my career all ruined because of the Germans—to say nothing of having been obliged to become disengaged to Jim.

And then, just as I was nearly crazy wondering how I was to get my self-respect back, I got a swell idea. I would enlist! Ladies could. I remembered reading a piece in a newspaper some place about yeowomen or something. And as soon as I realized that I could serve Uncle Sam and help get even with that bird, Von Hoffman, and the Kaiser and the alligator, and lose my personal feelings in public service, I got the most wonderfully easy feeling round my heart and dropped right off to sleep. But when I woke up in the morning it was something fierce, the way I felt. Believe you me, it was just like I had ate Welsh rabbit the night before, or something—the weight that was on my chest. At first I couldn't make out just what it was. Then I remembered. I had lost Jim! Of course I hadn't lost him so much as shook him; but it was all the same, or looked that way in the cold gray dawn of ten A. M.

Honest to Gawd, I never knew how fond I was of Jim until I woke up that day and realized he was gone forever! But I wouldn't of phoned him and say I'd changed my mind—not on a bet I wouldn't. And, anyways, I hadn't changed my mind. The evidences begun to pile up against him. I commenced to remember how he had been away on some mysterious trips so many afternoons for the last four or five months; and maybe with some blonde, for all I knew. And then his going to pieces like that over a mere alligator bite, the way he done; and, worst of all, not hitting that German, even though in pain, and crabbing our act by getting bit on the nose.

The more I thought about it, the worser I felt, laying there in retrospect and negligee. And I couldn't see no way of us ever getting together again—even when he called up and apologized; which, of course, I expected he would do any minute. But he didn't; and by the time Ma came in and routed me out of bed I had myself worked up so's I was crying something terrible, and hating Jim as hard as I could, which would of been enough to kill him—only for the pain in my heart for loving him.

While I ate only a light repast of ham and eggs, and a little marmalade, and etc., Ma made me tell her all; which I done the best way I could with crying in between. And then I told her about me having made up my mind to enlist. She was some surprised at that, though not much. Ma, having lived through two circuses and a trapeze act, it is sort of hard to surprise her very much—do you get me? So all Ma says was:

"Well, Mary Gilligan!" says she. "Can ladies enlist? I had a idea," she says, "only gentlemen was permitted."

"No," says I. "I see a piece in the paper where ladies can go in the navy—yeowomen they call them; a fancy name for a stenographer!"

"A whole lot too fancy!" says Ma, very prompt. "And no daughter of mine, a decent, respectable girl, is going sailing off on no battleship with a lot of sailors—not to mention submarines; not if I know it!" says Ma. "So, Mary Gilligan, you may as well put that idea out of your head, let alone you ain't a stenographer and couldn't learn it in a month."

"Well, Ma," I says, "maybe you're right; and I do get seasick awful quick. But—oh, Ma! I got to enlist some place. Can't you see the way I feel?"

Ma could.

"I know!" she says, very sympathetic. "I was the same when your pa missed both the third trapeze and the life net. I would of enlisted when he died if there had been a war. And, of course, you feel like Jim was dead. How about the Red Cross?"

"Won't do for me," I says, prompt. "I don't see myself sitting around in no shop, with a dust cloth tied over my head, selling tickets. I got to do something active or I'll go bugs!"

Then Ma had a real idea.

"How about this here Woman's Automobile Service?" says she. "The one I read you the piece about? You're a woman and you got a auto."

"Ma, you're a wonder!" I says. "Look up the address while I get my hat on! Tell Musette to call for the limousine; and watch me make a trial for my new job!"

So they done like I asked, and I kissed Ma and Musette good-by; also the two fool dogs, for I had a sort of feeling like I was going into battle already.

"When Jim calls up tell him it's no good—he can't see me," says I, the last thing. And then I set off in the limousine.

Well, I'd put on a very simple imported model and a small hat, and only my diamond earrings, and a brooch Jim had give me, when we was first engaged, over my aching heart. I wanted, above all things, to look refined; for, even if the U. S. Army isn't always quite that, still, this