Don walked with a light step, watching the busy activities of which he felt himself a part, as pleased as a recruit enrolled among veterans and willing to accept the hardships of the campaigns of labour as gaily as they. After all, this was life; this was the work-field of civilization, where labour sowed and sweated; this was the place for a man to be—not back there, among the college loiterers of culture, discussing the crops. He swung into Broadway with his head high, looking for the number of the office building where he was to begin his service. It was good to be a useful member of society; it gave a man dignity and assurance. Whatever the object and meaning of life might be—whatever the port to which all this bustle was hastening—it was a man's duty to pull on his oar with his fellows below on the benches, not to loaf on deck vainly studying the impenetrable mists that surrounded him.
He mounted the stone steps of his building and passed between red granite pillars into a hall of tiles and mosaics. A semicircle of elevators sucked in and poured out two trickling streams of passengers coming and going. A young man in a braided blue uniform gave them the word to start, with a curt "Three! . . . Go on, Seven! . . . One!"
Don asked him: "What floor is the Phœnix Company on?"
He dismissed another car before he replied: "There's about 'steen hundred of you fellahs up there already, all after one job. You couldn't get out of the cage if you went up. You might 's well go an'
