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 don't it?" His desk telephone interrupted him. "Yes. . . . Yes. . . . Eight away. . . . Oh, ten minutes. . . . Sure." He took up his hat and his cigar together. "Take Miss Richardson's signature. That'll be all right," he put aside Don's thanks. "I'll be back in an hour," he said over his shoulder to his stenographer—and left them to her.

She chewed a nonchalant cud of gum while Margaret signed her name on the line that was vacant for it. And still chewing, she had returned to her typewriting, indifferent to them, before they were aware that their business with her was finished.

"That was easy," Don said, in the elevator.

Margaret had her thoughts. She replied only: "I don't think he's a gentleman, do you?"

"Well, he's been mighty kind to me. I don't know what I should have done without him—and Walter Pittsey. They have all—everyone has been kind to me."

She looked at him with an expression which he mistook for incredulity. He tried to reply to it by telling her of his first discouraging days in New York and of the aid that had come to end them; and this recital was a revelation of character that was not lost on her, any more than Kidder's manner of receiving him had been.

She said, with an unexpected smile: "You haven't changed a bit."

"Did you want me to?"

She looked back at his interview with Kidder. "No. Not if it makes people be nice to you."

"Well, all right then," he said gaily. "I'm satisfied if you are!"