Emma McChesney was eating her solitary supper at the Berger house at
Three Rivers, Michigan. She had arrived at the Roast Beef haven many
years before. She knew the digestive perils of a small town hotel
dining-room as a guide on the snow-covered mountain knows each
treacherous pitfall and chasm. Ten years on the road had taught her to
recognize the deadly snare that lurks in the seemingly calm bosom of
minced chicken with cream sauce. Not for her the impenetrable
mysteries of a hamburger and onions. It had been a struggle, brief but
terrible, from which Emma McChesney had emerged triumphant, her
complexion and figure saved.

No more metaphor. On with the story, which left Emma at her safe and
solitary supper.

She had the last number of the _Dry Goods Review_ propped up against
the vinegar cruet and the Worcestershire, and the salt shaker. Between
conscientious, but disinterested mouthfuls of medium roast beef, she
was reading the snappy ad set forth by her firm's bitterest
competitors, the Strauss Sans-silk Skirt Company. It was a good
reading ad. Emma McChesney, who had forgotten more about petticoats
than the average skirt salesman ever knew, presently allowed her luke-
warm beef to grow cold and flabby as she read. Somewhere in her
subconscious mind she realized that the lanky head waitress had placed
some one opposite her at the table. Also, subconsciously, she heard
him order liver and bacon, with onions. She told herself that as soon
as she reached the bottom of the column she'd look up to see who the
fool was. She never arrived at the column's end.

"I just hate to tear you away from that love lyric; but if I might