Emma McChesney Co | Page 8

with overplumpness just a few years away, sat quietly by Senora Pages' side, but her darting, flashing, restless eyes were never still. The son (Emma heard them call him Pepe) was barely eighteen, she thought, but quite a man of the world, with his cigarettes, his drinks, his bold eyes. She looked at his sallow, pimpled skin, his lean, brown hands, his lack-luster eyes, and she thought of Jock and was happy.
Mrs. McChesney knew that she might visit the magnificent Buenos Aires shop of Pages y Hernandez day after day for months without ever obtaining a glimpse of either Pages or Hernandez. And here was Senor Pages, so near that she could reach out and touch him from her deck chair. Here was opportunity! A caller who had never been obliged to knock twice at Emma McChesney's door.
Her methods were so simple that she herself smiled at them. She donned her choicest suit of white serge that she had been saving for shore wear. Its skirt had been cut by the very newest trick. Its coat was the kind to make you go home and get out your own white serge and gaze at it with loathing. Senorita Pages' eyes leaped to that suit as iron leaps to the magnet. Emma McChesney, passing her deck chair, detached the eyes with a neat smile. Why hadn't she spent six months neglecting Skirts for Spanish? she asked herself, groaning. As she approached her own deck chair again she risked a bright, "Good morning." Her heart bounded, stood still, bounded again, as from the lips of the assembled Pages there issued a combined, courteous, perfectly good American, "Good morning!"
"You speak English!" Emma McChesney's tone expressed flattery and surprise.
Pages pere made answer.
"Ah, yes, it is necessary. There are many English in Argentina."
A sigh--a fluttering, tremulous sigh of perfect peace and happiness--welled up from Emma McChesney's heart and escaped through her smiling lips.
By noon, Senorita Pages had tried on the fascinating coat and secured the address of its builder. By afternoon, Emma McChesney was showing the newest embroidery stitch to the slow but docile Senora Pages. Next morning she was playing shuffleboard with the elegant, indolent Pepe, and talking North American football and baseball to him. She had not been Jock McChesney's mother all those years for nothing. She could discuss sports with the best of them. Young Pages was avidly interested. Outdoor sports had become the recent fashion among the rich young Argentines.
The problem of papa Pages was not so easy. Emma McChesney approached her subject warily, skirting the bypaths of politics, war, climate, customs--to business. Business!
"But a lady as charming as you can understand nothing of business," said Senor Pages. "Business is for your militant sisters."
"But we American women do understand business. Many--many charming American women are in business."
Senor Pages turned his fine eyes upon her. She had talked most interestingly, this pretty American woman.
"Perhaps--but pardon me if I think not. A woman cannot be really charming and also capable in business."
Emma McChesney dimpled becomingly.
"But I know a woman who is as--well, as charming as you say I am. Still, she is known as a capable, successful business woman. She'll be in Buenos Aires when I am."
Senor Pages shook an unbelieving head. Emma McChesney leaned forward.
"Will you let me bring her in to meet you, just to prove my point?"
"She must be as charming as you are." His Argentine betting proclivities rose. "Here; we shall make a wager!" He took a card from his pocket, scribbled on it, handed it to Emma McChesney. "You will please present that to my secretary, who will conduct you immediately to my office. We will pretend it is a friendly call. Your friend need not know. If I lose----"
"If you lose, you must promise to let her show you her sample line."
"But, dear madam, I do no buying."
"Then you must introduce her favorably to the department buyer of her sort of goods."
"But if I win?" persisted Senor Pages.
"If she isn't as charming as--as you say I am, you may make your own terms."
Senor Pages' fine eyes opened wide.
It was on the fourteenth day of their trip that they came into quaint Bahia. The stay there was short. Brazilian business methods are long. Emma McChesney took no chances with sample-trunks or cases. She packed her three leading samples into her own personal suitcase, eluded the other tourists, secured an interpreter, and prepared to brave Bahia. She returned just in time to catch the boat, flushed, tired, and orderless. Bahia would have none of her.
In three days they would reach Rio de Janeiro, the magnificent. They would have three days there. She told herself that Bahia didn't count, anyway--sleepy little half-breed town! But the arrow rankled. It had been the first to penetrate the armor of her business success.