Well, if the two weeks aren't to be a total loss, Wellington Frobisher thought to himself, I suppose one must make an effort. Home in Muncie, Indiana, on Christmas vacation from Harvard, Wellington was finding things a frightful bore. Funny, he never noticed how drab the local environs were before he went away to Harvard, but now they were unbearable. Nobody knew or cared about the New Frontier, or Existentialism, or anything.

Still, Wellington supposed, I guess I must arrange with one of the local flora for something to do on Christmas Eve. There seemed to be a general whirl of activity that evening, and Wellington did feel rather a yen for social contact. Indeed, Wellington joked to himself, it was about time he got some of that good old social contact in there. He cast about among the girls he remembered, and settled on Eugenie Schwartz as the one least offensive to his tastes. Eugenie always could hold up her end of a conversation, Wellington recalled, and he was about to remark to himself that she could also hold up her end of a formal, but he caught himself just in time.

"Hello?" said the voice on the other end.

"Hello, Eugenie? It's me, Wellington. I'm just back from Harvard for the vacation, and, uh, I see it snowed here, you should see how much snow we have in Boston, it stopped the subways and everything. What I called about was this: would you like to do something Christmas Eve?"

"This is Eugenie's mother. Calm down, Wellington."

"Oh. I didn't recognize your voice, Mrs. Schwartz. Is Eugenie there?"

"Yeah. Do you always call people at 10 at night, Wellington?"

"Oh. I'm sorry, Mrs. Schwartz. You see, at Harvard we're up till all hours of the night in bull sessions. I guess I've lost my sense of time."

"You should sleep more, Wellington. It's not good to stay up so late. It's the hours of sleep before midnight that do you the most good."

"I guess you're right, Mrs. Schwartz."

"Well, I'll let you talk to Eugenie this time, Wellington, but try to call at a more respectable hour in the future, willya?"

Still the same old bitch, Wellington thought to himself, but he was unable to pursue this line of argument any further as Eugenie came to the phone.

"Hello?"

"Eugenie? This is Wellington. How are you?"

"Super."