" said Eveley, with a faint smile. Then she flushed. "What
nerve for me to talk of assimilation," she said. "We don't know how to go
about it. We have been asleep and blind and careless and stupid, but
you--why, you will assimilate us, if we don't look out. You are a born
assimilator, Angelo, do you know that?"

"I guess so," came the answer vaguely, but politely. "I live about half a
mile below you, Miss Ainsworth, at the foot of the canyon on the bay
front. That's all the diff there is between us and you highbrows in
Mission Hills--about half a mile of canyon." He smiled broadly, pleased
with his fancy.

"That isn't much, is it, Angelo? And it will be less pretty soon, now
that we are trying to open our eyes. Good night, Angelo. I will see you
to-morrow--really see you, I mean. And please don't assimilate me quite
so fast--you must give me time. I--I am new to this business and progress
very slowly."

Then she said good night again, and went away. And Angelo swaggered back
to his companions. "Gee, ain't she a beaut?" he gloated. "All the swells
in our building is nuts on that dame. But she gives 'em all the go-by."

Then the Irish-American League, without the assimilator, went into a
private session with cigarettes and near-beer in a small dingy room far
down on Fifth Street--a session that lasted far into the night.

But Eveley Ainsworth did not know that. She was sitting in the dark
beside her window, staring out at the lights that circled the bay. But
she did not see them.

"Assimilate the foreign element," she whispered in a frightened voice. "I
am afraid we can't. It is too late. They got started first--and they are
so shrewd. But we've got to do something, and quickly, or--they will
assimilate us, beyond a doubt. And weren't they right about it, after
all? Isn't it patriotism and loyalty for them to go out to foreign
countries to pick up the finest and best of our civilization and take it
back to enrich their native land? It is almost--blasphemous--to teach
them a new patriotism to a new country. And yet we have to do it, to make
our country safe for us. But who has brains enough and heart enough to do
it? Oh, dear! And they do not call it duty that brings them here to take
what we can give them--they call it love--not love of us and of America,
but love of the little Wops and the little Greasers and the little Polaks
in their own home-land. Oh, dear, such a frightful mess we have got
ourselves into. And w