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.

But Mary felt defeated in the very purpose of her holiday. The
atmosphere of weary school-teachers trying to appear as golden-haired
flappers foot-loose for a romance; the white shoes always drying
outside tents or along window sills; the college professors eternally
talking about their one three-months' tour of Europe; the mosquitoes;
the professional invalid, the inevitable divorcee; the woman with
literary ambitions and a typewriter set in action on the greenest,
most secluded spot for miles about; the consta