"You shouldn't think about that," said Spencer, earnestly. "If it's Christmas, you shouldn't even think you've got a present." "You did buy me one!" Marian wriggled ecstatically in her chair. "I know you did!" Catherine waited with them for a home-bound bus. Spencer pulled her head down and whispered in her ear, "Mother, couldn't I go to the office and wait till you come home? I don't want to go with them." "It's too many hours, Spencer. You wouldn't know what to do with yourself." "Well, I don't know, anyway." His eyes darkened. "Staying home and no school and----" "Here comes our bus." Miss Kelly marshalled them before her, maneuvered them neatly up the steps. Catherine waved to them, watched their bus disappear in the mélêe of cars. Then she edged through the crowd to the windows, and walked slowly toward the office. The cold sunshine veneered the intent faces, the displays of gauds and kickshaws. Being downtown makes Christmas quite different, she thought. An enormous advertising scheme. That's it. Five more shopping days before Christmas. Look at that window! She strolled past it, her eyes bright with derision. Extraordinary, useless, expensive things, good for gifts, and nothing else on earth. Christmas belonged in the country, in the delicate mystery and secrecy with which children could invest it. Not in these glaring windows. A saturnalia of selling, that's Christmas in New York, she thought, darting across the street as the traffic officer's signal released the flood of pedestrians. Something strained, feverish, in the crowds. Probably half of them with empty purses. Like her own. Dr. Roberts stood at her window, waiting for her. "I've been talking with President Waterbury, Mrs. Hammond, and I wished to see you at once." He pulled reflectively at his pointed beard. "There are various ins and outs here. I don't know that you've been here long enough to discover them." Catherine wondered, with faint discomfort, whether President Waterbury had disapproved of something she had done. "A deplorable jealousy, for example, between departments." He cleared his throat. Catherine sat down. She had learned to wait until Dr. Roberts had sent off preliminary sputtering fireworks before he uncovered his serious purpose.