"Um-m-m-m--ye-ee-es," assented Emma McChesney, with no alarming
enthusiasm. "Jock dear, carry me back to bed again, will you? And then
open the closet door and pull out that big sample-case to the side of
my bed. The newest Fall Featherlooms are in it, and somehow, I've just
a whimsy notion that I'd like to look 'em over."




VIII

CATCHING UP WITH CHRISTMAS


Temptation himself is not much of a spieler. Raucous-voiced, red-
faced, greasy, he stands outside his gaudy tent, dilating on the
wonders within. One or two, perhaps, straggle in. But the crowd, made
wary by bitter experience of the sham and cheap fraud behind the
tawdry canvas flap, stops a moment, laughs, and passes on. Then
Temptation, in a panic, seeing his audience drifting away, summons
from inside the tent his bespangled and bewitching partner, Mlle.
Psychological Moment, the Hypnotic Charmer. She leaps to the platform,
bows, pirouettes. The crowd surges toward the ticket-window, nickel in
hand.

Six months of bad luck had dogged the footsteps of Mrs. Emma
McChesney, traveling saleswoman for the T. A. Buck Featherloom
Petticoat Company, New York. It had started with a six-weeks' illness
endured in the discomfort of a stuffy little hotel bedroom at Glen
Rock, Minnesota. By August she was back in New York, attending to out-