When his street was called he edged out to the steps and climbed down, wondering how the doctor expected a man with Peter’s salary to act upon his advice.  “You do that!” said the doctor, and left Peter to discover, if he could, how it was to be done without money; in other words, had blandly required Peter to perform a modern miracle.

Helen May was listlessly setting the table when he arrived.  He went up to her for the customary little peck on the cheek which passes for a kiss among relatives, and Helen May waved him off with a half smile that was unlike her customary cheerfulness.

“I’ve quit kissing,” she said.  “It’s unsanitary.”

“What did the doctor tell you, Babe?  You went to see him, didn’t you?” Peter managed a smile—­business policy had made smiling a habit—­while he unwound the paper from around the daffodils.

“Dad, I’ve told you and told you not to buy flowers!  Oh, golly, aren’t they beautiful!  But you mustn’t.  I’m going to get my salary cut, on the first.  They say business doesn’t warrant my present plutocratic income.  Five a week less, Bob said it would be.  That’ll pull the company back to a profit-sharing basis, of course!”

“Lots of folks are losing their jobs altogether,” Peter reminded her apathetically.  “What did the doctor say about your cough, Babe?”

“Oh, he told me to quit working.  Why is it doctors never have any brains about such things?  Charge a person two dollars or so for telling him to do what’s impossible.  What does he think I am—­a movie queen?”

She turned away from his faded, anxious eyes that hurt her with their realization of his helplessness.  There was a red spot on either cheek—­the rose of dread which her father had watched heart-sinkingly.  “I know what he thinks is the matter,” she added defiantly.  “But that doesn’t make it so.  It’s just the grippe hanging on.  I’ve felt a lot better since the weather cleared up.  It’s those raw winds—­and half the time they haven’t had the steam on at all in the mornings, and the office is like an ice-box till the sun warms it.”

“Vic home yet?” Peter abandoned the subject for one not much more cheerful.  Vic, fifteen and fully absorbed in his own activities, was more and more becoming a sore subject between the two.

“No.  I called up Ed’s mother just before you came, but he hadn’t been there.  She thought Ed was over here with Vic.  I don’t know where else to ask.”

“Did you try the gym?”

“No.  He won’t go there any more.  They got after him for something he did—­broke a window somehow.  There’s no use fussing, dad.  He’ll come when he’s hungry enough.  He’s broke, so he can’t eat down town.”

Peter sighed and went away to brush his thin, graying hair carefully over his bald spot, while Helen May brewed the tea and made final preparations for dinner.  The daffodils she arranged with little caressing pulls and pats in a tall, slim vase of plain glass, and placed the vase in the center of the table, just as Peter knew she would do.