best suit, a dowdy-looking affair which had bwen quite stylish in 1948, and traded her beaten-up snickers for a pair of sturdily-build pumps which seemed grotesquely thick when placed beside today's toothpick-slim spiko models. However, the outfit was the best that Jo had and after sho had finished dressing, her spirits porked up a bit.

Jo Brooks' one-room apartment was located in the shoddy waterfront district, and the nearest theater was of tho all-night, three-for-the-price-of-one variety; in other words, just another place for the Skid row bums to flop for a few hours. This, however, no longer bothered Jo, and she paid her admission and entered the theater. Ironically enough, Dickens' "Christmas Carol" was one of the three features playing, but Jo was oblivious to this, for the wine which she had been drinking earlier in the evening began to make her drowsy, and shortly after the movie samo on the soreen, she drifted into a wino-soaked slumber. Yot, the substance of the movie was not ontiroly lost on hor.

Many happy events in her childhood began creeping into Jo's dreams, events mostly associated with Christmas: the roaring fire in the living room fireplace, the pinescented smoke from the burning wood, the prosents under the tree, the pageantry and splendor of Midnight Mass with its added treat of old, traditional carols, the uplifting feeling which Jo experienced during Mass all these things caused pangs of nostalgia to float into her subconscious mind.

Gradually, Jo's dreams skipped ahead to more recent years, and she found herself dreaming of a beery blast down at the Bayside Inn on Christmas Eve. No stockings on the mantel, no turkey dinner with savory dressing, no Midnight Ma 88. All of this had been forsaken for a rowdy evening punctuated with an incident where Jo, feeling littlo paid, had flung an empty boor bottle at a group of Salvation Army carolers singing outside the bar. Jo's current girl friend, in embarrassment, had also deserted her on that night.