28.

Jack Langley felt denuded beneath her stare and his face tin- gled at her words. His hand went to the buttons on his shirt in an instinctive motion that served only to corroborate her words, to lend them a validity he did not wish to have publicly expressed. "I'm afraid", he said nervously, "that I wouldn't look much like a girl".

"I disagree", she said. "That very statement was girlish. Most men would have said something quite different, a typically masculine and aggressive statement. You didn't. You made a statement about how you might look, that's typically feminine".

He felt mocked suddenly and vaguely angry. He did not feel impelled to argue, perhaps because of the rapier stare she had trained on him, yet he wanted to lash out--to scratch at her face or pull her hair. And knowing this, he knew that she was right. "Look, Miss Morgan--" he began.

"Oh, Jack. Stop! Let's not have any of this MISS MORGAN business, please! I want--H her voice faltered with a not yet familiar emotion. "Perhaps I began in the wrong way. I feel as though I've insulted you. Jack, I've always thought we were close somehow. I called you up here because I need your help. I'm in a real spot".

She was Nancy gain and he warmed to her quickly. "Of course, he said. "Tell me what you want".

She took a deep breath. "I assume you know all about the store's Christmas charities".

"You mean sending the Santa Claus from each department around on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth with gifts from that depart- ment. It's become quite a tradition over the years".

"And our Santa goes to the Erna Jenkins home for unwed mothers with a sack of lingerie. It happens to be THE favorite charity, the hallmark if you want to call it that, of the store's Christmas tradition".

view".

"Wronged girls or wayward ones depending on your point of

Nancy Morgan laughed nervously. "Anyway, we just don't have a Santa to send this year. We're short by over a dozen sales