-uh--Satterlee? What's the good word?"

Mr. Satterlee would not glance up this time. "I'm pretty well. Can't
complain."

"Good. Good."

"Anything I can do for you?"

"No-o-o. No. Not a thing. Just dropped in to see my son a minute."

"I see." Not unkindly. Then, as old man Minick still stood there,
balancing, Mr. Satterlee would glance up again, frowning a little. "Your
son's desk is over there, I believe. Yes."

George and Nettie had a bedtime conference about these visits and Nettie
told him, gently, that the bond house head objected to friends and
relatives dropping in. It was against office rules. It had been so when
she was employed there. Strictly business. She herself had gone there
only once since her marriage.

Well, that was all right. Business was like that nowdays. Rush and grab
and no time for anything.

The winter was a hard one, with a record snowfall and intense cold. He
stayed indoors for days together. A woman of his own age in like
position could have occupied herself usefully and happily. She could
have hemmed a sash-curtain; knitted or crocheted; tidied a room; taken a
hand in the cooking or preparing of food; ripped an old gown; made over
a new one; indulged in an occasional afternoon festivity with women of
her own years. But for old man Minick there were no small tasks. There
was nothing he could do to make his place in the household justifiable.
He wasn't even particularly good at those small jobs of hammering, or
painting, or general "fixing." Nettie could drive a nail more swiftly,
more surely than he. "Now, Father, don't you bother. I'll do it. Just
you go and sit down. Isn't it time for your afternoon nap?"

He waxed a little surly. "Nap! I just got up. I don't want to sleep my
life away."

George and Nettie frequently had guests in the evening. They played
bridge, or poker, or talked.

"Come in, Father," George would say. "Come in. You all know Dad, don't
you, folks?" He would sit down, uncertainly. At first he had attempted
to expound, as had been his wont in the old house on Ellis. "I want to
say, here and now, that this country's got to ..." But they went on,
heedless of him. They interrupted or refused, politely, to listen. So he
sat in the room, yet no part of it. The young people's talk swirled and
eddied all about him. He was utterly lost in it. Now and then Nettie or
George would turn to him and with raised voice (he was not at all deaf
and prided himself on it) would