Emma McChesney Co | Page 7

trip secret. Besides Buck and the office staff, her son Jock was the only one who knew. But she found her cabin stocked like a prima donna's on a farewell tour. There were boxes of flowers, a package of books, baskets of fruit, piles of magazines, even a neat little sheaf of telegrams, one from the faithful bookkeeper, one from the workroom foreman, two from salesmen long in the firm's employ, two from Jock in Chicago. She read them, her face glowing. He and Buck had vied with each other in supplying her with luxuries that would make pleasanter the twenty-three days of her voyage.
She looked about the snug cabin, her eyes suddenly misty. Buck poked his head in at the door.
"Come on up on deck, Emma; I've only a few minutes left."
She snatched a pink rose from the box, and together they went on deck.
"Just ten minutes," said Buck. He was looking down at her. "Remember, Emma, nothing that concerns the firm's business, however big, is half as important as the things that concern you personally, however small. I realize what this trip will mean to us, if it pans, and if you can beat Meyers to it. But if anything should happen to you, why----"
"Nothing's going to happen, T. A., except that I'll probably come home with my complexion ruined. I'll feel a great deal more at home talking pidgin-English to Senor Alvarez in Buenos Aires than you will talking Featherlooms to Miss Skirt-Buyer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. But remember this, T. A.: When you get to know--really to know--the Sadie Harrises and the Sammy Blochs and the Ella Sweeneys of this world, you've learned just about all there is to know about human beings. Quick--the gangplank! Goodby, T. A."
The dock reached, he gazed up at her as she leaned far over the railing. He made a megaphone of his hands.
"I feel like an old maid who's staying home with her knitting," he called.
The boat began to move. Emma McChesney passed a quick hand over her eyes.
"Don't drop any stitches, T. A." With unerring aim she flung the big pink rose straight at him.
She went about arranging her affairs on the boat like the business woman that she was. First she made her cabin shipshape. She placed nearest at hand the books on South America, and the Spanish-American pocket interpreter. She located her deck chair, and her seat in the dining-room. Then, quietly, unobtrusively, and guided by those years spent in meeting men and women face to face in business, she took thorough, conscientious mental stock of those others who were to be her fellow travelers for twenty- three days.
For the most part, the first-class passengers were men. There were American business men--salesmen, some of them, promoters others, or representatives of big syndicates shrewd, alert, well dressed, smooth shaven. Emma McChesney knew that she would gain valuable information from many of them before the trip was over. She sighed a little regretfully as she thought of those smoking-room talks--those intimate, tobacco-mellowed business talks from which she would be barred by her sex.
There were two engineers, one British, one American, both very intelligent-looking, both inclined to taciturnity, as is often the case in men of their profession. They walked a good deal, and smoked nut-brown, evil-smelling pipes, and stared unblinkingly across the water.
There were Argentines--whole families of them--Brazilians, too. The fat, bejeweled Brazilian men eyed Emma McChesney with open approval, even talked to her, leering objectionably. Emma McChesney refused to be annoyed. Her ten years on the road served her in good stead now.
But most absorbing of all to Emma McChesney, watching quietly over her book or magazine, was a tall, erect, white-bearded Argentine who, with his family, occupied chairs near hers. His name had struck her with the sound of familiarity when she read it on the passenger list. She had asked the deck-steward to point out the name's owner. "Pages," she repeated to herself, worriedly, "Pages? P----" Suddenly she knew. Pages y Hernandez, the owner of the great Buenos Aires shop--a shop finer than those of Paris. And this was Pages! All the Featherloom instinct in Emma McChesney came to the surface and stayed there, seething.
That was the morning of the second day out. By afternoon, she had bribed and maneuvered so that her deck chair was next that of the Pages-family flock of chairs. Senor Pages reminded her of one of those dashing, white-haired, distinguished-looking men whose likeness graces the cover of a box of your favorite cigars.
General Something-or-other-ending-in-z he should have been, with a revolutionary background. He dressed somberly in black, like most of the other Argentine men on board. There was Senora Pages, very fat, very indolent, very blank, much given to pink satin and diamonds at dinner. Senorita Pages, over-powdered, overfrizzed, marvelously gowned,