Something splintered in the hall closet door. The manky zoomed through the hole it had broken and began ricocheting wildly through the house like a crazed living creature, smashing ornaments, cracking the plaster. Les rushed through the front door to try to pick up the policeman. The officer drew his gun. An unearthly scream of "Help!" shrieked out of the doorbell. Ann put her hands over her eyes, as if that would make the unbelievable scene vanish. * * * * * Three days after the Christmas party, in the middle of inventory, when her headache had completely vanished, Milly began to worry. She talked the situation over for one whole afternoon with her best friend at Hartshorne-Logan, a girl in the complaint department. That same evening, after work, Milly went to the public library for the first time in her life. She borrowed a thick tome on the theory of time travel. But only three sentences in the first ten pages were comprehensible to her. She turned to her manky for comfort before going to bed. The next morning, she braved the protective screen of secretaries, receptionists and sub-officials who ordinarily protected Mr. Hawkins from minor annoyances, and penetrated to his office. Mr. Hawkins didn't recognize her when she walked in. His attitude became much more formal when she reminded him of their actions on Christmas Eve. "So you see, Mr. Hawkins," Milly concluded earnestly, "I'm worried. We had so much fun at that party that we didn't think about what we might do to those folks in the past." "You should understand," Mr. Hawkins firmly replied, "that I was not enjoying myself at the party. Definitely not. I must engage in the painful duty of assuming a pose of gaiety on special occasions, such as the annual office party." Milly shot him a withering look, but didn't argue that particular point. She continued: "So I've been thinking. We might have done a terrible thing. Sending that dress to a kid without the right underclothing could be real dangerous. Maybe even fatal." "We cannot harm people in the long ago, any more than the past could conceivably harm us." "But don't you see?" Milly fought to restrain tears of fright and frustration. "I'm not _sure_! And it's the most important thing in the world to me. That little girl who got the dress is my grandmother. If she died while she was a little girl, there wouldn't be any me. I can't be born, if my grandmother died before she was three years old." "The paradoxes of time travel have been greatly exaggerated," Mr. Hawkins said. "Perhaps a genealogist would be able to clear up the question." * * * * * Milly rose to her full five-foot height, suddenly furious. "You don't care if I just vanish all of a sudden! All that you care about is keeping yourself out of a lot of bother!" She turned on her heel, walked to the door, and added: "After I've helped to fill forty orders every working day for the past three years!"