o work in the kitchen. We have time for an engagement at steel in the
parlor, if you'd care to refine your style, Captain."

"Just as you say, sir," Winfree said.

"Your politeness offends me, Wes," Kevin MacHenery complained, handing
him a foil and a wire-mesh mask. "Slip off your shoes. It's a terrible
burden you are laying on the shoulders of an aging man, being so
well-spoken when he likes nothing more than an argument. Now assume the
_on guard_ position, Wesley."

Winfree obediently placed his feet at right angles, raised his foil, and
"sat down," assuming the bent-leg position and feeling his leg-muscles,
still sore from his last session with MacHenery, begin to complain.
"You're holding your foil like a flyswatter," MacHenery said. "Here,
like this!"

"None of that, Daddy," Peggy said, appearing from the kitchen. "I'll
not have you two sitting down to eat all sweaty and out of breath, like
last time Wes was over here."

"She treats me like a backward child," MacHenery said. He took a bottle
from a shelf and poured generous dollops of Scotch into two glasses, one
of which he handed to Winfree. "Inasmuch as I disapprove of the coming
season," he said, "I'll offer you no toast, Captain."

"You don't care even for Xmas?" Winfree asked in a tone of mild
reproach.

"Ex-mas?" MacHenery demanded. "What the devil is this nor-fish-nor-fowl
thing you call Ex-mas? Some new festival, perhaps, celebrated by
carillons of cash-register chimes?"

"_Christmas_, if you prefer, sir," Winfree said. "We in the Bureau of
Seasonal Gratuities get used to using the other name. We use the word so
much in writing that cutting it from nine letters to four saves some
thirty thousand dollars annually, in this District alone."

"That's grand," MacHenery said. He sat down with his whiskey. "Simply
grand."

"We could drink to a Happy Potlatch," Captain Winfree suggested.

"I'd sooner toast my imminent death by tetanus," MacHenery said.

"I'd like to taste this stuff," Winfree said. "Let's compromise. Can we
drink to Peggy?"

"Accepted," MacHenery said, raising his glass. "To my Peggy--our Peggy."
He gave the whiskey the concentration it deserved. Then, "You know,
Wesley," he said, "if you weren't in the BSG I could like you real well.
I'd rejoice at your becoming my son-in-law. Too bad that you wear the
enemy uniform."

* * * * *

"The BSG is hardly an enemy," Winfree said. "It's been an American