The day before she left--it was well into July before she could conscientiously see her way clear to go--she received a plaid steamer rug. There was no card attached to the gift, and when she was summoned to Steve's apartment to inform him about some matters, Steve having a slight attack of grippe, she was so formal to both Steve and Beatrice, who stayed in the room, making them very conscious of her apricot satin and cream-lace presence, that Beatrice remarked later: "It's a fortunate thing that she isn't going to visit the North Pole; she'd be so chilly when she returned you'd have to wrap the entire office in a warming pad. I was thinking this morning that with the way she lives and manages she must have saved some money. Do you know if she has--and how much? I hope you won't pay her her salary while she is gone. It's no wonder she can afford nervous prostration if you do!" "I didn't know she had it," Steve said, dully. "Whatever it is, then, that makes her take all this time. The way employees act, walking roughshod in their rights! And now, deary, hurry and get well, for I've a wonderful surprise for you." She knelt beside the couch and patted his cheek. "I'm going to be your private secretary during her absence--yes, I am. As soon as I finish making the mannikins for the knitting bags at the kermis. Then I'm going to try to take her place--well, a tiny part of her place to start with, and work into the position gradually. Yes, I am. I'm determined to try it. I've worried and worried to decide what to do with myself." Worry was Beatrice's sole form of prayer. Steve wondered if what Mary had recently said to him could be true, at least in his own case. She had said that defeat at thirty should be an incentive--only after fifty could it be counted a definite disaster. CHAPTER XIII "You don't know how I've missed you," Steve told Mary upon her return. "Don't I look it?" he added, wistfully. Mary had appeared at the office late one September afternoon rather than appear the following morning as a model of exact punctuality. She had had to force herself to remain away until her leave of absence expired. It was Luke who rejoiced in the freedom of the woods and the green growing things in which his sister had tried to take consolation, telling herself they would revive her common sense and banish absurd notions concerning Steve O'Valley. It was Luke who rejoiced at catching the largest trout of the season, who never wearied of hayrack rides and corn roasts and bonfires with circles of ghostlike figures enduring the smoke and the damp and the rapid-fire gossiping and giggling. Luke had returned with a healthy coat of tan and a large correspondence list, pledging himself to revisit the spot every season.