Mary returned to the office with a premeditatedly formal air toward Steve. She had taken a New Year's resolution to refrain from letting an impulsive expression of sympathy assume false meanings in her heart. On the other hand, Steve felt a boor for having sent the books. He was so used to being called cave man and told not to do this or say that that he now pictured himself an awkward villain who had best confine himself to writing checks and growling at the business world. He almost dreaded seeing Mary lest she show she considered the gift improper despite her delightful little note of thanks. This demeanour, however, was of short duration. They became their real selves before the morning passed, the medium being the question of keeping John Gager, an old clerk pressed into service during the war period and now superfluous. "Are you going to let him go?" Mary reproached Steve. "I think so; he's a doddering nuisance they tell me." "But he's old and he has always served so faithfully. I don't think it's right to send him away now. He does do what is expected of him." Mary's vacation had somewhat dimmed her business sagacity. "I suppose; but we'll be doddering idiots some day, too. No one will keep us. No one can expect to be carried along indefinitely." "It's the first time I have ever asked you to do such a thing," she insisted, fearlessly. "To see him trying to act as fit as twenty-five, wearing juvenile shirts and ties, struggling to be brisk, slangy, to oblige everyone and step along, you know. Oh, don't turn him away just yet; he is honest and he tries. I can't tell him, and can't you see his old face quiver when he opens his envelope and finds the dismissal slip?" Steve's resolutions faded like mist before the sun. He found himself saying: "You ought to be a little sister to the poor. I guess we'll keep Gager for a while. He doesn't smoke cigarettes all day and try to lie about it. How did you like those books?" he added, boyishly. Mary laid a finger on her lips. "Sh-h-h. It's business. But I did like them--so would you." "I'd read them if I had an easy-chair and some homemade bread and tea. Do you know what I had to do for my Christmas Day?" "Please--I'd rather not----" "I must tell someone, and ask if I'm all wrong about it," he said, half humorously, half in earnest. "I told my father-in-law in part and it struck him as a huge joke. He purpled with laughing and said: 'Gad, she'll always have her way!'" Steve was thinking out loud. He was realizing that Constantine was not even conscious he had raised his daughter to be a rebel doll and he, apparently an honourable citizen, encouraged and upheld her in her doctrine. "Well, what did you have to do?" Mary asked in spite of herself.