y.

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.

"I had to officiate at Monster's Christmas tree, which was in the
boudoir, laden with the treasures of the four corners. I presented a
diamond-studded gold purse and a sable cape to my wife and received a
diamond-studded cigar knife--I have two others--and a mink-lined coat
in return. I was dragged to a half-dozen different houses to deliver
presents and collect the same, and witness the tragedy of Bea's
receiving a vanity case she had given someone else two years before
and which had evidently been going the rounds. It was a bit
disconcerting to have it turn up.

"I had a ponderous seven-course dinner at Mr. Constantine's, during
which I had to kiss Aunt Belle under the mistletoe and pretend to be
elated, hear several yards of grand opera torn off on the new talking
machine in its nine-hundred-dollar Chinese case, take my father-in-law
to the club, return to find Trudy and Gay having a Yuletide word with
my wife. Trudy brought a concoction of purple chiffon, jet beads, and
exploded hen which was entitled a breakfast jacket, and in return she
drew down a pair of silver candlesticks.

"After that we dressed in all our grandeur for the fancy-dress ball at
Colonel Tatlock's, Beatrice as Juliet and I as the young and dashing
Romeo! Shivering in our finery we drove to the Tatlock's to make fools
of ourselves until three A. M. and shiver home again with aching heads
and a handful of damaged cotillion favours. About the same sort of
thing happened on New Year's." He laughed, but it was not a pleasant
sound, inviting a response.

Beatrice dashed in, to Mary's relief, to bestow--over a week late--a
Christmas present of perfume and a black-silk waist.

"Mr.