It was just six o'clock on the evening of December ninth when Mrs.
Emma McChesney swung off the train at Columbus, Ohio, five hours late.
As she walked down the broad platform her eyes unconsciously searched
the loaded trucks for her own trunks. She'd have recognized them in
the hold of a Nile steamer--those grim, travel-scarred sample-trunks.
They had a human look to her. She had a way of examining them after
each trip, as a fond mother examines her child for stray scratches and
bruises when she puts it to bed for the night. She knew each nook and
corner of the great trunks as another woman knows her linen-closet or
her preserve-shelves.

Columbus, Ohio, was a Featherloom town. Emma McChesney had a fondness
for it, with its half rustic, half metropolitan air. Sometimes she
likened it to a country girl in a velvet gown, and sometimes to a city
girl in white muslin and blue sash. Singer & French always had a
Featherloom window twice a year.

The hotel lobby wore a strangely deserted look. December is a slack
month for actors and traveling men. Mrs. McChesney registered
automatically, received her mail, exchanged greetings with the affable
clerk.

"Send my trunks up to my sample-room as soon as they get in. Three of
'em--two sample-trunks and my personal trunk. And I want to see a
porter about putting up some extra tables. You see, I'm two days late
now. I expect two buyers to-morrow morning.

"Send 'em right up, Mrs. McChesney," the clerk assured her. "Jo'll
attend to those tables. Too bad about old Buck. How's the skirt
business?"