We sat late after dinner. Somewhere in the hall Bilkins hovered with glasses and tray to be on hand when the whistles began their screaming. In twenty years he had not omitted this New Year's Eve ceremony.
"Your wound never troubles you?" my mother asked, her solicitation over a scratch I had received ten months before not disguising a light of pride that charmed me.
"I've forgotten it, Mater. Never amounted to anything."
"Still, you did leave some blood on French soil," Dad spoke up, for this conceit appealed to him.
"Enough to grow an ugly rose, perhaps," I admitted.
"I'll bet you grew pretty ones on the cheeks of those French girls," he chuckled.
"Pretty ones don't grow any more, on cheeks or anywhere else," I doggedly replied. "Materialism's the keynote now—that's why I'm going back to work, at once."
"Oh," the Mater laughed, "don't think of your father's stupid office, yet!"
"There's nothing left to think of," I grumbled.
"Isn't there?" he exclaimed. "What'd you say if Gates has the yacht in commission, and you take a run down to Miami——"