"Say, ma'am, I wonder if you could tell us what kind of trees those are, in that row down the middle of your place? We've been having a little argument about it." My smile faded. I was furious. "They're Chinese elms!" I snapped, and I stomped away. It was that same night that Grant, leaving for the postoffice, told me to be sure to get at least three customers while he was gone. "Don't worry," I said sarcastically, "I'll just sit out here on the curb around the lawn where they can see me. I'm so beautiful they won't be able to resist driving in. If they try to escape I'll lure them right in." I was standing idly at the office door about twenty minutes later when I saw our car, a blue sedan, slow down as Grant waited for traffic to clear so that he could make the left hand turn into our place. I smiled suddenly. I'd show him what I meant by luring them right in. Pretending to assume that he was a prospective customer, I stepped out in full view and made elaborate motions of adjusting my hair, rolling my eyes, and making come-hither gestures with my head. I thrust out one leg and ran my hands over it as though I were pulling up a sheer stocking; I smiled in an over-exaggerated way that would have, I felt, put to shame any of the old time movie vamps. My legs were in a coy Betty Grable pose, and as Grant pulled into the driveway I repeated my gestures of eye-rolling and of motioning seductively with tosses of my head. "You got a cabin for four people?" asked a woman sitting in the front seat. Why, who--(I would have thought whom, but I was too excited)--had Grant brought home with him? I looked at the man behind the steering wheel questioningly. It wasn't Grant. The car--well, obviously, ours wasn't the only blue sedan of that particular make and age. "A--a cabin?" I asked finally. "Sure, of course. Would you--uh--like to look at it?" Two half-grown boys, in the back seat, were staring at me pop-eyed, their mouths half open. I'll never forget their expressions, or my own humiliation. My friend from the Sylvan motel, Mrs. Barkin, stopped in a few days later to give me a library book she wanted me to read, and she laughed heartily when I told her about my experience. She had managed a motel in Riverside, I knew, before she came to Banning after the death of her husband, and when she was through laughing I brought up the subject of motel cabins being rented by the hour instead of by the night. "Short stops?" she said. "Oh, yeah, we used to get lots of 'em, when we were in Riverside. You get that in any big city, yeah. Lots of money in it too if you have a good location for it--you can rent each cabin several times a night. Only thing is you have to do a lot of work cleaning cabins in the night then, yeah, that is if you're gonna rent 'em again."