Griffin was another who did not hear the third repetition of Dorgan's judgment. He had gone on ahead like a man anxious to quit a noisome sick-room and to one of the assistant cashiers in the outer office he was saying: "I advise you to get your chief to go home and lie down awhile. It might also be a good idea to call up his family doctor and get him to drop over here right away. From the looks of him, Mr. Bracken's not a well man. He's had a shock--a profound shock. His nerves might give way, I'd say, any minute. I'm afraid he's in for a very, very hard time!" PEACE ON EARTH [Decoration] This Christmas was going to be different. So far as Mr. and Mrs. Bugbee were concerned the Christmas before had been a total failure, disillusioning, disappointing, fraught with heart-burnings. But this coming one--well, just let everybody wait and see. They'd show them. "It's going to be so dog-goned different you'd be surprised!" said Mr. Bugbee. He said it after the plan had taken on shape and substance and, so saying, raised a hand in the manner of a man who plights a solemn troth. But first the plan had to be born. It was born on a day in October when Mr. Bugbee came into the living-room of their light-housekeeping apartment on West Ninth Street just around the corner from Washington Square. The living-room was done in Early Byzantine or something--a connoisseur would know, probably--and Mrs. Bugbee was dressed to match the furnishings. She was pretty, though. Her friends said she reminded them of a Pre-Raphaelite Madonna, which either was or was not a compliment dependent on what privately the speaker thought about the Pre-Raphaelite school. Still, most of her friends liked it, being themselves expertly artistic. She had the tea things out--the hammered Russian set. This was her customary afternoon for receiving and presently there would be people dropping in. She lifted her nose and sniffed. "Whew!" she exclaimed. "Where have you been? You smell like a rancid peppermint lozenge." "Been down in the storeroom in the basement getting out my winter suits," he said. "Messy job. I broke up a party." "Whose?" she asked. "Mr. and Mrs. Moth were celebrating their woolen wedding," he explained. "They furnished the guests and I did the catering. You ought to see that heavy sweater of mine. It's not heavy any more. I'm going to write a chapter to be added to that sterling work 'Advice to an Expectant Moth-er.'" "Oh dear!" she said. "That's the trouble with living in one of these old converted houses." "This one has backslid," he interjected. "Insectivorous, I call it. There were enough roaches down there to last a reasonable frugal roach-collector for at least five years. Any entomologist could have enjoyed himself for a week just classifying species." "And I fairly saturated your clothes with that spraying stuff before I packed them away," she lamented. "And as for camphor balls--well, if I used up one camphor ball I used ten pounds."