alds and if they're going to be home tonight tell
them we'll be over for a visit."

Ursula made a face. "Do we _have_ to call on those people? They'll
bore me stiff."

"For heaven's sake, Ursula! It's a matter of vital importance to
me--and you also, if I have to appeal to your wide streak of
selfishness."

"I can't see it."

"I'll explain later. I've got to go."

During the day Ursula called him. "Well, Phil, I called as you said
and I've committed us for dinner tonight."

"Dinner! Hmm, they _are_ convivial people."

"Yes and the dinner is going to be cooked right there in their house.
How vulgar can some people get?"

That evening while dressing Ursula said, "Phil, John spends a lot of
time at the MacDonalds'. What do you suppose he sees in them? It gets
me the way he quotes them all the time and reports their least doings.
Today he came tearing into the house and said, 'Ursula, it's
wonderful!' I said, 'What's wonderful?' And John said, 'The dinner
they're cooking at MacDonalds'. I've never smelled anything like it in
all my life. Why don't we cook in our house like they do? Mrs.
MacDonald was baking cookies and let me have one right out of the
oven. Mmmm, boy was it _good_!'"

Ursula finished, "Now, I ask you, did you ever hear anything so
barbaric--cooking in the house and having all the odors permeate the
whole place?"

"Well, we'll see."

Later when they arrived at the MacDonalds' they were welcomed with a
quiet warmth and friendliness that Philon cynically assumed to be a
new and different front.

As they sat down to dinner Mrs. MacDonald, a rosy-cheeked woman with
a quick and ready smile, said, "I'm sorry we aren't able to get a
connection yet. So everything we're eating tonight is right out of our
deep-freeze."

John Miller said, "Gosh, Mrs. MacDonald, as far as I'm concerned, I'd
rather eat from your deep-freeze anytime than from the FP!"

Bill MacDonald looked across the table at Jean and said, "All right,
Jean."

Jean and all the MacDonalds bent their heads and the girl began, "We
thank Thee for our daily bread as by Thy hands...."

As the girl spoke Phil's gaze drifted around to his wife, who lifted
her shoulders in mystified amazement. But it was a bigger surprise to
see John's bent head. For the moment John was a part of this
family--part of a wholeness tied together by an invisible bond. The
utter strangeness of it shocked Philon into rare clarity of insight.

He saw himself wra