If only they could find an opening for a nice, paying gents'
furnishing business in a live little town that wasn't swamped with
that kind of thing already they'd buy it and settle down like a white
man, by George! and quit this peddling. The missus hates it anyhow;
and the kids know the iceman better than they do their own dad.

On the morning that Mrs. Emma McChesney (representing T. A. Buck,
Featherloom Petticoats) finished her talk with Miss Hattie Stitch,
head of Kiser & Bloch's skirt and suit department, she found herself
in a rare mood. She hated her job; she loathed her yellow sample
cases; she longed to call Miss Stitch a green-eyed cat; and she wished
that she had chosen some easy and pleasant way of earning a living,
like doing plain and fancy washing and ironing. Emma McChesney had
been selling Featherloom Petticoats on the road for almost ten years,
and she was famed throughout her territory for her sane sunniness, and
her love of her work. Which speaks badly for Miss Hattie Stitch.

Miss Hattie Stitch hated Emma McChesney with all the hate that a flat-
chested, thin-haired woman has for one who can wear a large thirty-six
without one inch of alteration, and a hat that turns sharply away from
the face. For forty-six weeks in the year Miss Stitch existed in Kiser
& Bloch's store at River Falls. For six weeks, two in spring, two in
fall, and two in mid-winter, Hattie lived in New York, with a capital
L. She went there to select the season's newest models (slightly
modified for River Falls), but incidentally she took a regular
trousseau with her.

All day long Hattie picked skirt and suit models with unerring good
taste and business judgment. At night she was a creature transformed.
Every house of which Hattie bought did its duty like a soldier and a