Emma McChesney Co | Page 3

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EMMA McCHESNEY & CO.
by Edna Ferber

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. BROADWAY TO BUENOS AIRES II. THANKS TO MISS
MORRISSEY III. A CLOSER CORPORATION IV. BLUE SERGE V.
"HOOPS, MY DEAR!" VI. SISTERS UNDER THEIR SKIN VII. AN
ETUDE FOR EMMA

EMMA McCHESNEY & CO.
I
BROADWAY TO BUENOS AIRES
The door marked "MRS. MCCHESNEY" was closed. T. A. Buck,
president of the Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, coming gaily
down the hall, stopped before it, dismayed, as one who, with a spicy bit
of news at his tongue's end, is met with rebuff before the first syllable
is voiced. That closed door meant: "Busy. Keep out."
"She'll be reading a letter," T. A. Buck told himself grimly. Then he

turned the knob and entered his partner's office.
Mrs. Emma McChesney was reading a letter. More than that, she was
poring over it so that, at the interruption, she glanced up in a
maddeningly half-cocked manner which conveyed the impression that,
while her physical eye beheld the intruder, her mental eye was still on
the letter.
"I knew it," said T. A. Buck morosely.
Emma McChesney put down the letter and smiled.
"Sit down--now that you're in. And if you expect me to say, `Knew
what?' you're doomed to disappointment."
T. A. Buck remained standing, both gloved hands clasping his walking
stick on which he leaned.
"Every time I come into this office, you're reading the latest scrawl
from your son. One would think Jock's letters were deathless
masterpieces. I believe you read them at half-hour intervals all week,
and on Sunday get 'em all out and play solitaire with them."
Emma McChesney's smile widened frankly to a grin.
"You make me feel like a cash-girl who's been caught flirting with the
elevator starter. Have I been neglecting business?"
"Business? No; you've been neglecting me!"
"Now, T. A., you've just come from the tailor's, and I suppose it didn't
fit in the back."
"It isn't that," interrupted Buck, "and you know it. Look here! That day
Jock went away and we came back to the office, and you said----"
"I know I said it, T. A., but don't remind me of it. That wasn't a fair test.
I had just seen Jock leave me to take his own place in the world. You
know that my day began and ended with him. He was my reason for
everything. When I saw him off for Chicago that day, and knew he was
going there to stay, it seemed a million miles from New York. I was
blue and lonely and heart-sick. If the office-boy had thrown a kind
word to me I'd have broken down and wept on his shoulder."
Buck, still standing, looked down between narrowed lids at his business
partner.
"Emma McChesney," he said steadily, "do you mean that?"
Mrs. McChesney, the straightforward, looked up, looked down, fiddled
with the letter in her hand.
"Well--practically yes--that is--I thought, now that you're going to the

mountains for a month, it might give me a chance to think--to----"
"And d'you know what I'll do meanwhile, out of revenge on the sex?
I've just ordered three suits of white flannel, and I shall break every
feminine heart in the camp, regardless-- Oh, say, that's what I came in
to tell you! Guess whom I saw at the tailor's?"
"Well, Mr. Bones, whom did you, and so forth?"
"Fat Ed Meyers. I just glimpsed him in one of the fitting-rooms. And
they were draping him in white."
Emma McChesney sat up with a jerk.
"Are you sure?"
"Sure? There's only one figure like that. He had the thing on and was
surveying himself in the mirror--or as much of himself as could be seen
in one ordinary mirror. In that white suit, with his red face above it, he
looked like those pictures you