The Mary Lee Taylor Program — 1948

Sally offers her attic to store a newlywed couple's trunks; rummaging up there later, Jim and Rick mistake the stored wedding gifts for treasure left behind by an old tenant, and have to be talked down from their windfall.

Jim's new job means leaving Midland for Capitol City, and Sally's father argues hard that a pregnant daughter should stay behind until things are settled -- leaving Sally to weigh his practicality against being apart from her husband.

Word reaches Midland of a brunette taking an interest in Jim at his new office, and of other trouble besides; with tempers high on all sides, Sally has to decide whether to trust her husband or her friends.

Sally reaches the Capitol City station with nobody there to meet her, and every telephone call makes Jim's silence look worse -- while a lonely old man named Lemuel appoints himself her escort through the search.

Jim has already left the job he took a week earlier, so the Carters spend their thirteen-month anniversary hunting flats, and the one they can afford is rough enough that Jim doubts it will do for a pregnant wife.

Jim has turned quiet and short-tempered and Sally reads it as anger at her; a visit to the doctor and a small surprise of her own rearrange what each of them is actually worried about.

Jim's secret errand turns out to be theatre tickets and a night out -- if the couple can ever get their turn at the bathroom the whole floor shares. They end up throwing a party at home instead.

Jim measures his coming child against the royal baby in England and finds his own prospects thin; then he introduces his old friend Charlie to the neighbours and Charlie reads the Carters as badly off.

Sally's knack for brightening a shabby flat sets the whole building competing to outdo each other -- until the landlady answers everyone's improvements with higher rent, and Sally feels responsible.

The bad blood between Jim and Sally's father has lasted since the move, and with the building emptying out for the holidays, Sally and her mother begin quietly working on both men.

A Christmas programme in place of the usual half-hour: no Carter sketch and no recipe, but carols from a group announced as Vic Demoan and the Serenaders, and Mary Lee telling the story of how a snowbound Alpine priest came to write "Silent Night."