Emma McChesney Co | Page 7

comfort me, anyway, Emma. I'll know that while I'm
smirking on the sprightly Miss Sweeney, your face will be undergoing
various agonizing twists in the effort to make American prices
understood by an Argentine who can't speak anything but Spanish."
"Maybe I am short on Spanish, but I'm long on Featherlooms. I may not
know a senora from a chili con carne, but I know Featherlooms from
the waistband to the hem." She leaned forward, dimpling like fourteen
instead of forty. "And you've noticed--haven't you, T. A.?--that I've got
an expressive countenance."
Buck leaned forward, too. His smile was almost gone.
"I've noticed a lot of things, Emma McChesney. And if you persist in
deviling me for one more minute, I'm going to mention a few."
Emma McChesney surveyed her cleared desk, locked the top drawer
with a snap, and stood up.
"If you do I'll miss my boat. Just time to make Brooklyn. Suppose you
write 'em."
That Ed Meyers might know nothing of her sudden plans, she had kept
the 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,