As December grew colder, Neil’s injured leg began to ache again, and he thought of the war, of companions who had been killed, of the lonely hospital Christmas a year ago. The Englishwomen had been so kind, but he had longed for the voices of the Middlewest, for his mother and Vestal and Biddy, his sisters Joan and Kitty. He had them all now; it would be their first Christmas together in three years.

He wondered what effect the war had had on him. Had there been any at all?

Lying in the hospital, he had been certain that all of the young soldiers would get together when they returned and shut up that one single revolving door called “the Republican and Democratic Parties,” and vote for righteousness and prosperity and no more wars. But when he had been in the bank for six weeks, as he heard nothing from the bankers and lawyers and merchants except the prophecy that That Man Roosevelt would be dictator of the country by 1950, he slipped back into his normal faith in the security of zeros.

But lately, at the Federal and Sylvan Park Tennis clubs, he had found himself irritated by the frequent sneers at “kikes.” He meditated:

–-I don’t suppose the Jews like being called “kikes” any more than my French-Canadian ancestors liked being called “frog-eaters.” I admitted that fellow Lieutenant Rosen got killed by the land-mine. Sure, lots of Jews are just like us—I guess. I ought to get the liberal point of view while I’m still young, and then hold onto it, or I might turn mean, when I’m fat and middle-aged and president of this bank—or maybe of the First National of St. Paul.

* * * * *

These meditations were conducted at his desk, under the marble vaulted ceiling of the Second National’s banking-room. He had been busy with Small Loans all morning, particularly with returned soldiers who wanted to start businesses, and he had tried to combine generosity with caution. It is not true that every banker lies awake days plotting to ruin all establishments belonging to small indignant men with crippled daughters. The banking business is usually not so good in a community with no money whatever.

He had before him a pile of folders with complicated financial statements, and as he recalled his dawn-thoughts during the war, the folders looked dreary. He sighed over a cigarette and glanced suspiciously at the fine brass plate with “N. Kingsblood, Asst. Cashier.”

When he had graduated from the University of Minnesota, in 1935, he had planned to study medicine. But in the summer he went temporarily to work as a messenger in the Second National. Nothing happened that would blast him out of that smug mausoleum, and when he had married Vestal and begot Biddy, he was caught, and not at all unhappy about it. He read books on banking; he rose to be teller; he was popular with women customers who saw his smile and his red hair through the bars that he did not know were there. He was a favorite of President John William Prutt for his steadiness and good-humor and honesty, and this year, after his return from the service, he had been made an assistant cashier.