Classic Audiobook Collection - Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber ~ Full Audiobook [comedy]

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber audiobook. Genre: comedy This is the final volume in the trilogy following the smart, stylish, divorced and independent businesswoman Emma McChesney in her career from stenographer, then drummer (traveling salesman) to owner of her own company. (The first was Roast Beef, Medium and the second Personality Plus). Edna Ferber first gained success with these stories and later went on to write Show Boat, Giant and other well known books. First published in 1915, Emma's son, Jock, has moved to Chicago with his new wife. Emma decides to sell in South America and proves she has not lost her magic touch. Emma gets involved in romance, saving a business and many other things. Emma symbolizes the ideal woman at the dawn of the twentieth century: sharp, capable, charming, and progressive. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 1 (00:50:45) Chapter 2 (01:31:48) Chapter 3 (02:12:52) Chapter 4 (02:52:30) Chapter 5 (03:34:30) Chapter 6 (04:11:36) Chapter 7 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

emma mcchesney and company by edna ferber chapter i broadway to buenos ayres the door marked mrs mcheschesney was closed t a buck president of the buck featherloom pedicoe 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 pouring 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, commental 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, New Want, 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 last 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 them all out and play solitaire with them.

Emma McChesney 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 tailors, 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 that he was going there to stay, it seemed a million miles from New York. I was blue when lonely and heart-sense.

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— Mr. 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 be give me a chance to think, too. And do 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 tailors? Well, Mr. Bones, whom did you, and so forth. Fat Ed Myers! I just glimpsed him in one of the fitting rooms, and they were draping him in white. Emma Chesney 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 see labeled, Sunrise on snow-covered mountain. Did he see? He dodged when he saw me. Actually, at least he seems to have the decency to be ashamed of the deal he gave us when he left us flat in the thick of his Middle Western trip and went back to the sand-silk skirt company.

I wanted him to know I had seen him. As I passed, I said, You'll mow him down in those clothes, Myers. Buck sat down in his leisurely fashion and laughed his low, pleasant laugh. Can't you see him, Emma, at the seashore? But something in Emma McChesney's eyes and something in her set unsmiling face told him that she was not seeing seashores. She was staring straight at him, straight through him, miles beyond him. There was about her that tense, electric, breathless air of complete detachment, which always enveloped her when her lightning mind was leaping ahead to a goal unguessed by the slower thinking.

What's your tailor's name? Name? Trotter? Why? Emma McChesney had the telephone operator before he could finish. Get B. Trotter, the tailor. T-R-O-O-T-E-R. Say I want to speak to the tailor who fits Mr. Ed Myers of the Sand-Silk Skirt Company. T.A. Buck leaned forward, mouth open, eyes wide. Well, what in the name of—I'll let you know in a minute. Maybe I'm wrong. It's just one of my hunches. But for ten years—but for ten years I sold featherlooms through the same territory that Ed Myers was covering for the sand-silk skirt people. It didn't take me ten years to learn that Fat Ed hasn't the decency to be ashamed of any deal he turned no matter how raw. And let me tell you, T.A., if he dodged when he saw

you, it wasn't because he was ashamed of having played us low down. He was contemplating playing lower down. Of course, I may be. She picked up the receiver in answer to the bell, then sweetly, her calm eyes smiling into Buck's puzzled ones. Hello, is this Mr. Myers-Taylor? I'm to ask if you are sure that the grade he selected is the proper weight for the tropics. What? Oh, you say you assured him it was the weight of flannel you always advise for South America. And you said they'd be ready when? Next week? Thank you. She hung up the receipts. receiver. The pupils of her eyes were dilated. Her cheeks were very pink, as always, under excitement. She stood up, her breath coming rather quickly. Harrah for the hunch! It holds. Fat Ed Myers is

going down to South America for the Sand Silk Company. It's what I've been planning to do for the last six months. You remember I spoke of it. You poo-poohed the idea. It means hundreds of thousands of to the sand-sill people if they get it, but they won't get it. T.A. Buck stood up suddenly. Look here, Emma. If you're— I certainly am. Nothing can stop me. The skirt business has been—well, you know what it's been for the last two years. The South American boats sail twice a month.

Fat Edmires his clothes or promise for next week. That means he isn't sailing until week after next. but the next boat sails in three days. She picked up a piece of paper from her desk and tossed it into Buck's hand. That's the letter I was reading when you came in. No, don't read it. Let me tell you instead. Buck threw cane, hat gloves, and the letter on the broad desk, thrust his hands into his pockets, and prepared for argument.

But he only got as far as—but I won't allow it. You couldn't get away in three days at any rate. And at the end of two weeks you have come to your house. senses, and besides, T.A., I don't mean to be rude, but here are your hat and stick and gloves. It's going to take me just 48 hours to mobilize. But, Emma, even if you do get in ahead of Myers, it's an insane idea. A woman can't go down there alone. It isn't safe.

It's bad enough for a man to tackle it. Besides, we're holding our own. That's just it. When a doctor issues a bulletin to the effect that the patient. is holding his own, you may have noticed that the relatives always begin to gather. It's a bubble, this South American idea. Ascosh and Southport and Altoona money has always been good enough for us. If we can keep that trade, we ought to be thankful. Emma McChesney pushed her hair back from her forehead with one gesture, and patted it

into place with another. Those two gestures, to one who knew her, meant loss of comprehensive. for one instant, followed by the quick regaining of it the next. Let's not argue about it now. Suppose we wait until tomorrow when it's too late. I am thankful for the trade we've got, but I don't want to be narrow about it. My thanking capacity is such that I can stretch it out to cover some things we haven't got yet. I've been reading up on South America. Reading, put in Buck hotly.

What actual firsthand information can you get about a country from books? Well, then, I haven't been only reading. I've been talking to everyone I could lay my hands on who has been down there and who knows. Those South American women love dress, especially the Argentines. And do you know what they've been wearing? Petticoats made in England. You know what that means? An English woman chooses a petticoat like she does a husband for life.

It isn't only a garment. It's a shelter. It's built like a tent. If once I can introduce the T.A. Buck-featherloom petticoat and Knickerbocker into sunny South America, they'll use those English and German petticoats for linoleum floor coverings. Heaven knows they'll fit the floor better than the human form. But Buck was unsmiling. The muscles of his jaw were tense.

I won't let you go. Understand that I won't allow it. Tut-t-tut-T-A. What is this? Cave-man stuff? Emma, I tell you it's dame. It isn't worth the risk, no matter what it brings us." Emma McChesney struck an attitude, hand on heart.

Heaven will protect the working girl, she sang. Buck grabbed his hat. I'm going to wire Jock. All right, that'll save me fifty cents. Do you know what he'll wire back? Go to it, get the tango on its native torn, or worse that effect. Emma, use a little logic and common sense. There was a note in Buck's voice that brought a quick response from Mrs. McChesney.

She dropped her little air of gaiety, the pain in his voice and the hurt in his eyes, and the pleading in his whole attitude banished the smile from her face. It had not been much of a smile, anyway. T.A. knew her genuine smiles well enough to recognize a counterfeited sight, and Emma McChesney knew that he knew. She came over and laid a hand lightly on. on his arm. T.A. I don't know anything about logic. It's a hot house plant. But common sense is a field

flower, and I've gathered whole bunches of it in my years of business experience. I'm not going down to South America for a lark. I'm going because the time is ripe to go. I'm going because the future of our business needs it. I'm going because it's a job to be handled by the most experienced salesman on our staff. And I'm going because the future of our business. and I'm just that. I say it because it's true. Your father, T.A., used to see things straighter and farther than any businessman I ever knew. Since his death made me a partner in this firm, I find myself when I'm troubled or puzzled,

trying to see a situation as he'd see it if he were alive. It's like having an expert stand back of you in a game of cards, showing you the next move. That's the way I'm playing this hand. And I think we're going to take most of the tricks away from Fat Ed Myers. T.A. Bucks' eyes traveled from Emma McChesney's earnest, glowing face, to the hand that rested on his arm. He reached over and gently covered that hand with his own. I suppose you must be right, little woman. You always are. Dad was the founder of this business. It was the pride of his life.

That word founder has two meanings. I never want to be responsible. for its second meaning in connection with this concern you never will be t a not with you at the helm he smiled rather sadly i'm a good ordinary common seaman but you've got imagination and foresight and nerve and daring and that's the stuff that admirals are made of bless you t a i knew you'd see the thing as i do after the first shock was over it has always been nip and tuck between the sand-sill company and us You gave me the hint that showed me their plans. Now help me follow it up." Buck picked up his hat, squared his shoulders, and fumbled with his gloves like a bashful schoolboy. You—you couldn't kill two birds with one stone on this trip, could you, Mrs. McChesney, back at her desk again, threw him an inquiring glance over her shoulder. You might make it a combination honeymoon and featherloom expedition?

"'T. A. Buck!' exclaimed Emma McChesney. "'Then as Buck dodged for the door, "'Just for that, I'm going to break this to you. "'You know that I intended to handle the Middle Western Territory for one trip, "'or until we could get a man to take Fat Ed Myers' place. "'Well,' said Buck apprehensively, "'I leave in three days. "'Goodness knows how long I'll be gone.

"'A business deal down there is a ceremony, "'and you won't need any white flannel clothes, in Rock Island, Illinois. Buck, aghast, faced her from the doorway. You mean I? Just that! smiled Emma McChesney pleasantly, and pressed the button that summoned the stenographer. In the next 48 hours, Mrs. McChesney performed a series of mental and physical calisthenics that would have landed an ordinary woman in a sanatorium. She cleaned up with the thoroughness and dispatch of a housewife who, before going to the seashore, forgets not instructions to the iceman, the milkman, the janitor, and the maid. She surveyed her territory, behind and before,

as a general studies troops and countryside before going into battle. She foresaw factory emergencies, dictated office policies, made sure of staff organization like the business woman she was. Out in the stockroom, under her supervision, there was scientifically packed into sample trunks and cases, a line of featherloom skirts and knickers calculated to dazzle Brazil and entrance Argentina, and into her own personal trunk there went a wardrobe, each article of which was a garment with a purpose. Emma McChesney knew the value of a smartly tailored suit and a business argument.

T. A. Buck canceled his order at the tailors, made up his own line for the Middle West, and prepared to storm that prosperous and important territory for the first time in his business career. The South American boat sailed Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning found the two partners deep in one of those condensed last-minute discussions. Mrs. McChesney opened a desk drawer, took out a leather-covered pocket notebook, and handed it to Buck. A tiny smile quivered about her lips. Buck took it mystified.

Your last diary? Something much more important. I call it the salesman's who's who. Read it as you ought your Bible. But what? Buck turned the pages wonderingly. He glanced at a paragraph frowned, read it aloud slowly. Des Moines, Iowa, Klein and Company, Miss Ellasweeney,

skirt buyer, old girl, skidding. wants to be entertained, take her to dinner and the theater. He looked up, dazed. Good Lord, what is this a joke? Wait until you see Ella. You won't think it's a joke. She'll buy only your smoothest numbers, asked 60 days dating,

and expect you to entertain her as you would your rich aunt. Buck returned to the little book dazedly. He flipped another leaf, another. Then he read in a stunned sort of voice. Sam Bloom, Paris Emporium, Duluth, see Sadie. He closed the book. Say, see here, Emma, do you mean to—

Sam is the manager, interrupted Mrs. McChesney pleasantly, and he thinks he does the buying, but the brains of that business is the little girl named Sadie Harris. She's a wonder. Five years from now, if she doesn't marry Sam, she'll be one of those 10,000 a year foreign buyers. Play your samples up to Sammy, but quote your prices down to Sayy. Read the next one, T.A. Buck read on, his tone lifeless, Miss Sharp, Berg Brothers, Omaha, strictly business, known among the trade as the human cactus, cancelled a $10,000 order once

because the grateful salesman called her girly, stick to skirts. Buck slapped the book smartly against the palm of his hand. Do you mean to tell me that you made this book out for me? Do you mean to say that I have to cram on this like a kid studying for example? exams? That I'll have to cater to the personality of the person I'm selling to? Why, it's, it's, Emma Mchestney nodded calmly. I don't know how this trip of yours is going to affect the firm's business, TA, but it's going to be a liberal education for you. You'll find that you'll need a little book a good many times before you're through, and while you're following its advice,

do this. Forget that your name is Buck, except for business purposes. Forget that. Forget that you're that your family has always lived in a brownstone mausoleum in seventy-second street. Forget that you like your chops done just so, and your wine at such and such a temperature, get close to your trade. They're an awfully human lot, those Middle Western buyers. Don't chuck them under the chin, but smile on them. And you got a lovely smile, T.A. Buck looked up from the little leather book, and as he gazed at Emma McChesney, the smile appeared and justified its praise. I'll have this to 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 signora from a chili concarne, But I know featherlooms from the waistband to the hymn. 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 ride them. That Ed Myers 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 donnas 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 salesman long in the firm's employ, two from jock and 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 Myers 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 Pigeon English to Signor Alvarez and Buenos Aires than you will talking featherlooms to Miss Skirtbire in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. But remember this, T.A. When you get to know, really to know, the Sadie Harris's and and the Sammy blocks and the Ella sweetenies of this world, you've learned just about all there is to know about human beings. Quick, the gangplank. Goodbye, T.A.

The doc 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 businesswoman that she was. First she made her cabin ship-shape. 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, unobstrucibly, and guided by those years spent in media, 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 23 days. For the most part, the first-class passengers were men.

There were American businessmen, 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-meloed 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 the 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 wordly. Pages! Suddenly she knew Pages e. Hernandez. the owner of the great Buenos Aires shop, a shop finer than those of Paris, and this was Pahes. All the featherloom instinct in Emma McChesney came to the surface and stayed there seething. This was the morning of the second day out. By afternoon she had bribed and maneuvered so that her deck chair was next to that of the Pahez's family flock of chairs. Signor Pahes 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 soberly in black, like most of the other Argentine men on board. There was Signora Pahes, very fat, very indolent, very blank, much-givered. to pink satin and diamonds at dinner. Signorita Pahes, over-powdered, over-frized, marvelously gowned, with over-plumpness just a few years away, sat quietly by Signora Pahez's 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 lackluster eyes, and she thought of jock and was happy. Mrs. McChesney knew that she might visit the magnificent Buenos Aires shop of Pajés-I-Hernandez, day after day for months, without ever obtaining a glimpse of either Pahes or Hernandez. And here was Signor Pajez so near that he was, 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 McChestey'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 sure wear. Its skirt had been cut by the very newest trick. Its coat was made to make you go home and get out your own white serge and gaze at it with loathing. Signorita Pages's 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 stutze. still, bounded again, as from the lips of the assembled Pageses, there issued a combined, courteous, perfectly good American, good morning. You speak English! Emma McChesney's tone expressed flattery and surprise.

Pahey's pair made answer. Ah, yes, it is Necessetti. There are many English in Argentina. A sigh. A fluttering, tremulous sigh of perfect peace and. and happiness welled up from Emma McChesney's heart and escaped through her smiling lips. By noon, Signorita Pahais 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 Signora Pahes.

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 Pahais was avidly interested. Outdoor sports had become the recent fashion among the rich young Argentines. The problem of Papa Pahais was not so easy. Emma McChesney approached her subject warily,

skirting the by-paths of politics war, climate, customs, to business. Business. But a lady as charming as you can understand nothing of business, said Signor Pahes. Business is for your militant sisters. But we American women do understand business. Many charming American women are in business. Signor Pahais 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. She is known as a capable, successful businesswoman. She'll be in Buenos Aires when I am. Sr. Pah Hayes 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 Chesney. You would 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 madame, I do no buying.

Then you must introduce her favorably to the department buyer of her sort of goods. But if I win, persisted Signor Pahais. If she isn't as charming as you say I am, you may make your own terms. Signor Pahez's fine eyes opened wide. It was on the 14th 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. But she had learned things from that experience at Bahia. She had learned that the South American dislikes the North American because his northern cousin patronizes him. She learned

that the North American business firm is thought by the Southern businessman to be tricky and dishonest, and that because the Northerner has not learned how to pack a case of goods scientifically, as have the English, Germans, and French, the South American rages to pay cubic feet rates on boxes that are three-quarters emptying. So it was with a heavy heart, but a knowing head that she faced Rio de Janeiro. They had entered in the evening the sun set splashing the bay and the hills in the foreground and the Sugarloaf Mountain with an unbelievable riot of crimson and gold and orange and blue. Suddenly the sun jerked down as though pulled by a string, and the magic purple night came up

as though pulled by another. Well, anyway, I've seen that, breathed Emma McChesney, thankfully. Next morning, she packed her three samples as before, her heart heavy, her mind on fat Ed Myers coming up two weeks behind her. Three days in Rio, and already she had bumped her impatient, quick-thinking, quick-acting North American business head, up against the stone wall of South American leisureliness and prejudice. She meant no irreverence, no impiety, as she prayed, meanwhile, packing number 79, 65, and 48 into her personal bag.

Oh, Lord, let Fat Ed Myers have Bahia, but please, please help me to land Rio and Brinaceres. Then, in smart, tailored suit and hat, interpreter in tow, a prayer in her heart, and excitement blazing in cheeks and eyes, she made her way to the dock through the customs into a cab that was to take her to her arena, the Broad Avenue. Exactly two hours later, there dashed into the customs house a well-dressed woman whose hat was very much over one ear.

She was running as only a woman runs when she's made up her mind to get there. She came hot foot, held to skilter, regardless of modestly crippling skirt, past officers, past custom officials, into the section where stood the one small sample trunk that she had ordered down in case of emergency. The trunk had not gone through the customs. It had not even been opened, but Emma McChesney he did not trifles like that. Rio de Giorno had fallen for feather looms.

Those three samples, number 79, 65, and 48, that both, posted style, cut, and workmanship never before seen in Rio had turned the trick. They were as a taste of blood to a hungry lion. Rio wanted more. Emma McChesney was kneeling before her trunk, had whipped out her key, unlocked it, and was swiftly selecting the numbers wanted from the trays, her breath coming quickly, her deft fingers choosing unerringly, when an indignant voice said in Portuguese,

it is forbidden. Emma McChesney did not glance around. Her head was buried in the depths of the trunk, but her quick ears had caught the word prohiba. Speak English, she said, and went on unpacking. English! shouted the official, no. Then, with a superhuman effort, as Emma McChesney stood up, her arms laden with featherloom samples of rainbow hues,

Parre, Arrest! Mrs. McChesney slammed, down the trunk top, locked it, clutched her samples firmly, and faced the enraged official. Go wait. I haven't time to be arrested this morning. This is my busy day. Call around this evening. Whereupon she fled to her waiting cab, leaving behind her a Brazilian official stunned and

raging by turns. When she returned, happy, triumphant, order-laden, he was standing there, stunned no longer, but raging still. Emma McChesney had forgotten all about him. The gold-braided official advanced, moustachios bristling, a volley of Portuguese burst from his long, pent lips. Emma McChesney glanced behind her. Her interpreter threw up helpless hands,

replying with a still more terrifying burst of vowels. Bewildered a little frightened, Mrs. McChesney stood helplessly by. The official laid a nun-too-gentle hand, on her shoulder. A little group of lesser officials stood comic opera fashion in the background, and then Emma McChesney's New York training came to her aid. She ignored the valuable interpreter. She remained coolly unruffled by the fuselage of Portuguese. Quietly, she opened her handbag and plunged her fingers deep, deep therein. Her blue eyes gazed confidingly up into the Brazilian's

snapping black ones, and as she withdrew her hand from the depths of her purse, there passed from her white fingers to his brown ones, that which is the Esperanto of the nations. The universal language understood from Broadway to Brazil. The hand on her shoulder relaxed and fell away. On deck once more she encountered the suave signor pahes. He stood at the rail surveying Rio Shores with that lip-curling contempt of the Argentine, for everything Brazilian.

He regarded Emma McChesney's radiant face. You are pleased with this Indian Rio? Mrs. McChesney paused to gaze with him at the receding shores. Like it, I'm afraid I haven't seen it. From here it looks like Coney. But it buys like Seattle. Like it, well, I should say I do. Ah, signora, exclaimed Pahé's distressed.

Wait, in six days you will behold, "'You're New York, London's Paris, Bach. "'You shall drive with my wife and daughter, Rue Palermo. "'You shall see jewels, motors, toilets as never before. "'And you will visit my establishment?' "'He raised an emphatic forefinger. "'But surely?' "'Emma Chesney regarded him solemnly.

"'I promised to do that. "'You may rely on me.' "'Six days later they swept up the muddy and majestic plata, whose color should have wanted the name of River of Gold instead of River of Silver. From the boat's upper deck, Emma Chesney beheld a skyline, which was so like the skyline of her own New York, that it gave her a shock.

She was due for still another shock when, an hour later, she found herself in a milstrom of motors, cabs, streetcars, newsboys, skyscrapers, pedestrians, policemen, subway stations. Where was the South American length? Where was the Argentine inertia? The rush and roar of it, the bustle and the bang of it made the 23-day voyage seem a myth. I'm going to shut my eyes, she told herself, and then opened them quickly. If that little brown traffic policeman turns out to be a big red-faced traffic policeman,

then I'm right. This is Broadway and 42nd. Shock number three came upon her entrance to the Grand Hotel. It had been Emma McChesney's boast that her ten years on the road had familiarized her with every type, grade, style, shape, cut, and mold of hotel clerk. She knew him from the Knickerbocker to the Eagle House at Waterloo, Iowa. At the moment she entered the Grand Hotel, she knew she had overlooked one, accustomed though she was to the sorterial splendors of the man behind the desk, She might easily have mistaken this one for the President of the Republic.

In his glittering uniform, he looked a pass between the Supreme Chancellor of the KPs in full regalia and a Prince of India during the Durbar. He was regal. He was overwhelming. He would have made the most splendid specimen of North American hotel clerk look like a scullery boy. Mrs. McChesney spent two whole days in Bois, Buenos Aires before she discovered that she could paralyze this personage with a peso. A peso is 43 cents.

Her experience at Bahia and at Rio de Girod-Gerno had taught her things. So for two days, haunted as she was, by visions of fat admirers coming up close behind her, she possessed her soul in patience and waited. On the great firm of Pahezi Hernandez rested the success. of this expedition. When she thought of her little trick on Signor Paix, her blight spirits sank. Suppose, after all, that this powerful South American should resent her little Yankee joke. Her trunks went through the customs. She secured an interpreter. She arranged her samples with loving care, style-cut workmanship. She ran over their strong points in her mind.

She looked at them as a mother's eyes rest fondly on the shining faces, the well-brushed hair, the clean peneophores of her brood, and her heart swelled with pride. They lay on their tables, the artful knickerbockers, the gleaming petticoats, the pink and blue pajamas, the bifurcated skirts. Emma McChesney ran one hand lightly over the navy-blue satin folds of a sample. Pahais are no Pahas, you're a credit to your mother, she said whimsically. Up in her room once more she selected her smartest tailor costume, her most modest hat, the freshest of gloves and blouses.

She chose the hours between four and six, when wheel trafficked was suspended in the Cayenne, Florida, and throughout the shopping district, the narrow streets of which are congested to the point of suffocation at other times. As she swung down the street, they turned to gaze after her, these Argentines, the fat seignoras turned, and the smartly costumed sallow seoritas, and the men, all of them. They spoke to her these last, but she had expected that and marched on with her free swinging stride, her chin high, her color very bright, into the great shop of Pahes I Hernandez at last, up to the private offices, her breath coming a little quickly, into the presence of the shiny

secretary, shiny teeth, shiny hair, shiny skin, shiny nails. He gazed upon Emma McChesney, the shine gleaming brighter. He took, in his slim brown fingers, the card on which Signor Pahes had scribbled that day on board ship. The shine became dazzling. He bowed low and backed his way into the office of Signor Pahes. A successful man is most impressive, when in those surroundings which had been built up by his success.

On shipboard, Sr. Pahays had been a genial, charming, distinguished fellow-passenger. In his luxurious business office he still was genial, charming, but his environment seemed to lend him a certain austerity. "'Signorra M'Hestie!' "'How awful that sounds, Emma M'estey told herself. We spoke of you but last night. Then now you come to win the wazer, yes?' He smiled but shook his head.

Yes, replied Emma McChesney, and tried to smile, too. Signor Pah Hayes waved the hand toward the outer office. She is with you, this business friend who is so charming? Oh, yes, said Emma McChesney. She's with me. Then, as he made a motion toward the push-button, which would summon the secretary, no, don't do that. Wait a minute. From her bag, she drew her business card, presented it. Read that first.

Signor Paix read it. He looked up. Then he read it again. He gazed again at Emma McChesney. Emma McChesney looked straight at him and tried in vain to remember ever having heard of the South American's sense of humor. A moment passed, her heart sank. Then Signor Paix's through back his fine head and laughed. Laft as the Latin laughs, emphasizing his mirth with many ejaculations and gestures. "'Ah, you northerners, you're too quick for us. Come, I myself must see this garment which you honor by selling.'

His glance rested approvingly on Emma McChesney's trim smart figure. "'That which you sell, it must be quite right.' "'I not only sell it,' said Emma McChesney. I wear it. That, how is it you not to say? Ah, yes, that settles it. Six weeks later, in his hotel room in Columbus, Ohio, T.A. Buck sat reading a letter forwarded from New York and postmarked Argentina.

As he read, he chuckled, grew serious, chockled again, and allowed his cigar to grow cold. For the seventh time. Dear T.A. They've fallen for featherlooms, the way in escalation. takes the gum-drops. My letter of credit is all shot to pieces, but it was worth it. They make you pay a separate license fee in each province, and South America is just one darn province after another. If they'd lump a peddler's license for $5,000 and tell you to go ahead,

it would be cheaper. I landed Pahais I Hernandez by a trick. The best of it is. The man I played it on saw the point and laughed with me. We North Americans brats. too much about our sense of humor. I thought ten years on the road had heartened me to the most fiendish efforts of a hotel chef, but the food at the Grande here makes a quarter-inch round steak with German fried look like Sherry's latest triumph. You know I'm not fussy. I'm the kind of woman who, given her choice of ice cream or cheese for dessert, will take

cheese. Here, given my choice, I play safe and take neither. I've reached the point where I make a meal of radishes. They kill their beef in the morning and serve it for lunch. It looks and tastes like an Ethiope's ear. But I don't care because I'm getting gorgeously thin. If the radishes hold out, I'll invade Central America and Panama. I've one eye on Valparaiso already.

I know it sounds wild, but it means a future and a fortune for featherlooms. I find I don't even have to talk skirts. They're self-sellers. But I have to talk honesty and packing. How did you hit it off with Ella Sweeney? Haven't seen a sign of Fat Ed Myers. I'm getting nervous. Do you think he may have exploded at the equator?

Emma. But kind fortune saw fit to add a last sweet drop to Emma Machesney's already brimming cup. As she reached the docks on the day of her departure, clad in cool, crisp white from hat to shoes. Her quick eye spied a red-faced, rotund, familiar figure disembarking from the New York boat just arrived. The Fates, grinning, had planned this moment like a stage manager.

Fat Ed Myers came heavily down the gangplank, his hat was off, he was mopping the top of his head with a large damp handkerchief. His gaze swept over the busy landing docks, darted hither and thither. alighted on Emma McChesney with a shock and rested there. A distinct little shock went through that lady, too, but she waited at the foot of her boat's gangway until the unbelievably nimble Myers reached her. He was a fiery spectacle,

his cheeks were distended, his eyes protuberant, he wasted no words. They understood each other those two. Coming or going. Going, replied Emma McChesney. Clean up this, this, this Boinaz Arias, too? Absolutely. Dead, huh?

Myers stood a moment panting, his little eyes glaring into her calm ones. Well, I beat you in Bahia anyway, he boasted. Emma McChesney snapped her fingers blithely. Baha for Bahia. She took a step or two up the gangplank and turned, Goodbye, Ed, and good luck. I can recommend the radishes, but pass up the beef.

Dangerous. Fat Ed Myers, still staring, began to stutter unintelligibly. His lips moving while no words came. Emma McChesney held up a warning hand. Don't do that, Ed, not in this climate. A man of your build to, I'm surprised. Consider the feelings of your firm. Fat Edm Myers glared up at the white-clad, smiling gracious figure.

His hands unclinched. The words came. Oh, if only you were. a man for just ten minutes, he moaned. End of Chapter 1. Broadway to Buenos Aires. Chapter 2 of Emma McChesney and Company by Edna Ferber. This Libre Box recording is in the public domain, recording by Phil Chenevere. Chapter 2. Thanks to Miss Morrissey.

It was Fat Edm Myers of the Sand Silk Skirt Company, who first said that Mrs. Emma McChesney was the Maud Adams of the business world. It was on the occasion of his being called to the carpet for his failure to make sand silk as popular as Emma McChesney's famed featherlooms. He spoke in self-defense heatedly. It isn't the featherlooms. It's McChesney. Her line is no better than ours.

It's her personality, not her petticoats. She's got a following that swears by her. If Maude Adams were to open on Broadway and East Lynn, they'd flock to see her, wouldn't they? Well, Emmott McChesney could sell hoop skirts, I'm telling you. She could sell bustles. She could sell red-wollen mittens on Fifth Avenue. The title stuck. It was in late September when Mrs. McChesney, sunburned, decidedly underweight but gloriously triumphant,

returned from a four-month tour of South America. Against the earnest protests of her business partner, T.A. Buck, president of the Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, she had invaded the southern continent and left it abloom with featherlooms from the plata to the canal. Success was no stranger to Mrs. McChesney. This last business victory had not turned her head, but it had come perilously near to tilting that extraordinarily well-balanced part. A certain light in her eyes, a certain set of her chin, and added briskness of bearing. A cocky slant of the eyebrow revealed the fact that, though Mrs. McChesney's feet were still on the ground, she might be said to be standing on tip-toe. When she had sailed from Brooklyn Pier that June

afternoon four months before, she had cast her ordinary load of business responsibilities on the unaccustomed shoulders of T.A. Buck. That elegant person, although president of the company which his father had founded, had never been its real head. When trouble threatened in the workroom, it was to Mrs. McChesney that the four-woman came. When an irascible customer in Green Bay, Wisconsin waxed impatient over the delayed shipment of a feather-loom order, it was to Emma McChesney that his typewritten protest was addressed. When the office machinery needed mental oiling, when a new hand demanded to be put on silk work instead of mercerized, when a consignment of skirt material turned out to be more than usually metallic,

it was in Mrs. Emma McChesney's little private office that the tangle was unsnourled. She walked into that little office now at nine o'clock of a brilliant September morning. It was a reassuring room, bright, orderly, workman-like, reflect. the personality of its owner. She stood in the center of it now and looked about her, eyes glowing, lips parted. She raised her hands high above her head, then brought them down to her sides again with an unconsciously dramatic gesture that expressed triumph, peace, content, relief, accomplishment, and a great and deep satisfaction. T.A. Bucked in the doorway, saw the gesture and understood.

Not so bad to get back to it, is it? Bad? It's like a drink of cool spring water after too much champagne. In those miserable South American hotels, how I used to long for the artiliness and quiet of this. She took off her hat and coat. In a vase on the desk, a cluster of yellow chrysanthemum shook their shaggy heads in welcome. Emma McChesney's quick eye jumped to them,

then to Buck, who had come in and was surveying the scene appreciatively. You, of course, she indicated the flowers with a nod, and a radiant smile. Sorry, no, the office staff did that. There's a card of welcome, I believe. Oh, said Emma McChesney. The smile was still there, but the radiance was gone. She seated herself at her desk, Buck took the chair nearby. She unlocked a drawer, opened it, rummaged, closed it again, unlocked another. She patted the flat top of her desk with loving fingers. "'I can't help it,' she said, with a little, shamed laugh.

"'I'm so glad to be back. I'll probably hug the four-woman and bite a piece out of the first feather loom I lay hands on. I had to use all my self-control to keep from kissing Jake the elevator man coming up.' Out of the corner of her eye, Emma McChesney had been glancing at her handsome business partner. She had found herself doing the same thing from the time he had met her at the dock late in the afternoon of the day before. Those four months had wrought some subtle change. But what? Where?

She frowned a moment and thought, Then, is that a new suit, T.A.? This, Lord, no. Last summers. Put it on because of this. this July hangover in September. Why? Oh, I don't know, vaguely. I just wondered. There was nothing vague about T.A. Buck, however. His old air of leisureliness was gone. His very attitude as he sat there, erect, brisk, confident, was in direct contrast to his old

graceful indolence. I'd like to go over the home grounds with you this morning, he said. Of course, in our talk last night, we didn't cover the South American situation thoroughly, but your letters and the orders told the story. You carried the thing through to success. It's marvelous. But we stay-at-homes haven't been marking time during your absence. The puzzled frown still sat on Emma McChesity's brow, as though thinking aloud she said,

"'Have you grown thinner or fatter or something?' not announce wait at the club yesterday he leaned forward a little his face suddenly very sober emma i want to tell you now that-that mother she i lost her just a few weeks after you sailed emma mchesney gave a little cry she came quickly over to him and one hand went to his shoulder as she stood looking down at him her face all sympathy and contrition and sorrow and you didn't write me me. You didn't even tell me last night. I didn't want to distress you. I knew you were having a hard enough pull down there without additional worries. It happened very suddenly while I was out on the road. I got the wire in Peoria. She died very suddenly and quite painlessly. Her companion, Miss Tate, was with her. She had never been herself since Dad's death. And you—I could only do what was to be done. Then I went back on the road.

I closed up the house, and now I've leased it. Of course it's big enough for a regiment, but we stayed on because mother was used to it. I sold some of the furniture, but stored the things she had loved. She left some to you. To me? You know she used to enjoy your visits so much, partly because of the way in which you always talked of Dad. She left you some jewelry that she was fond of, and that colossal old mahogany buffet that you had. you used to rave over whenever you came up. Heavens knows what you'll do with it. It's a white elephant. If you add another story to it, you could rent it out as an apartment. Indeed, I shall take it and cherish it, and polish it up myself every week. The beauty. She came back to her chair.

There was a moment in silence. Then Emma McChesney spoke musingly. So that was it. Buck looked up. i sensed something different i didn't know i couldn't explain it buck passed a quick hand over his eyes shook himself sat up erect and brisk again and plunged with a directness that was as startling as it was new to him into the details of middle western business good exclaimed emma chesney it's all very well to know that feather looms are safe in south america but the important thing is to know how they're going in the corn country buck stood up suppose we transfer this talk to my office all the papers are there all the correspondence all the orders everything you can get the whole situation in half an hour what's the use of talking when figures will tell you He walked swiftly over to the door and stood there waiting. Emma McChesney rose. The puzzled look was there again. No, that wasn't it after all, she said.

Eh? said Buck. Wasn't what? Nothing, replied Emma McChesney. I'm wool gathering this morning. I'm afraid it's going to take me a day or two to get back into harness again. If you'd rather wait, if you think you'll be more fit tomorrow or the day after, we'll wait. There's no real hurry, I just thought. But Mrs. McChesney led the way across the hall that separated her office from her partners.

Halfway across, she stopped and surveyed the big, bright, busy main office, with its clacking typewriters and rustle and crackle of papers and its air of concentration. Why, you've run up a partition there between Miss Casey's desk and the workroom door, haven't you? Yes, it's much better that way. Yes, of course. And why? Where are the boys' desks? Spaldings and Hutchinson's, and they're all gone, she turned in amazement.

Break it to me. Aren't we using traveling men anymore? Buck laughed his low, pleasant laugh. Oh, yes, but I thought their desks belonged somewhere else than in the main office. They're now installed in the little room between the shop and Healy's office. Close quarters, but better than having them out here, but they were inclined to neglect their reports in order to shine in the eyes of that pretty new stenographer. There are one or two other changes. I hope you'll approve of them.

I'm sure I shall, replied Emma McChesney a little stiffly. In Buck's office she settled back in her chair to watch him as he arranged neat sheaves of paper for her inspection. Her eyes traveled from his keen, eager face to the piles of paper and back again. tell me did you hit it off with the ellisweeneyes and the sadie harris of the great middle west is business as bad as the howler say it is you said something last night about a novelty bifurcated skirt was that the new designer's idea how have the early buyers taken to it buck crooked an elbow over his head in self-defense stop it you'll make me feel like reams cathedral don't bombard until negotiations fail he handed her the first sheaf of papers. But before she began to read, I'll say this much, Miss Sharp of Bird Brothers, Omaha, the one you warned against as the human cactus, had me up for dinner. Well, I know you don't, but it's true. Her father and I hid it off just like that.

He's a character, that old boy. Ever meet him? No? And Miss Sharp told me something about herself that explains her porcupine pose. That poor child was engaged to a chap who was killed in the Spanish-American War, and she, Kate Sharp, interrupted Emma McChesney. Why, T. A. Buck. In all her vinegory, narrow life, that girl has never had a bow, much less Buck's eyebrows came up slightly. Emma McChesney, you haven't developed a clause, have you? With a gasp, Emma McChesney plunged into the papers before her. For ten minutes, the silence of the room was unbroken, except for the crackling of papers. Then Emma McChesney put down the first sheaf

and looked up at her business partner. Is that a fair sample? she demanded. Very, answered T.A. Buck and handed her another set. Another ten minutes of silence. Emma McChesney reached out a hand for still another set of papers. The pink of repressed excitement was tinting her cheeks. They're all like this? practically, yes.

Mrs. McChesney faced him. Her eyes wide, her breath coming fast. T.A. Buck? She slapped the papers before her smartly with the back of her hand. This means you've broken our record for Middle Western sales. Yes, said T.A. quietly. Dad would have enjoyed a morning like this, wouldn't he? Emma McChesney stood up.

He enjoyed it? He is enjoying it. Don't tell me that T.A. senior, just because he is no longer on earth, has failed to get the joy of knowing that his son has realized his fondest dreams. Why, I can feel him here in this room. I can see those bright brown eyes of his twinkling behind his glasses. Not know it. Of course he knows it. Buck looked down at the desk, smiling curiously. Do you know, I felt that way, too. Suddenly, Emma Chesney began to laugh.

It was not all mirth that laugh. Buck waited. And to think that I, I kindly and patronizingly handed you a little book full of tips on how to handle Western buyers. The salesman's who's who. I, who used to think I was the witch of the West when it came to selling. You, on your first selling trip, have made me look like a show. shoestring peddler. Buck put out a hand suddenly. Don't say that, Emma. I, somehow it takes away all the pleasure. It's true. And now that I know, it explains a lot of things that I've been puzzling

about in the last 24 hours. What kind of things? The way you look and act and think, the way you carry your head, the way you sit in a chair, the very words you use, your gestures, your intonations. They're different. T.A. Buck, busy with his cigar, laughed a little self-consciously. Oh, nonsense, he said. You're imagining things. Which remark, while not a particularly happy one, certainly was not in itself so unfortunate as to explain why Mrs. McChesney should have turned rather suddenly and bolted into her own office across the hall and closed the door behind her. A. B. A. B. B. C.A. Buck, quite cooled and unruffled, viewed her sudden departure quizzically. Then he took his cigar from his mouth, and stood eyeing in a moment with more attention, perhaps,

than it deserved, in spite of its fine aroma. When he put it back between his lips and sat down at his desk once more, he was smiling, ever so slightly. Then began a new order of things in the offices of the E.T.A. Buck Featherloom Pedicote Company, feet that once had turned quite as a matter of course toward the door marked Mrs. McChesney, now took the direction of the door opposite, and that door bore the name of Buck. Those four months of Mrs. McChesney's absence had put her partner to the test, that acid test had washed away the accumulated dross of years and revealed the precious metal beneath. T. A. Buck had proved to be his father's son.

If Mrs. McChesney noticed that the head office had miraculously moved across the hall, if her sharp ears marked that the many feet that once had paused at her door now stopped at the door opposite, if she realized that instead of, I'd like your opinion on this Mrs. McChesney, she often heard the new, I'll ask Mr. Buck. She did not show it by word or sign. The 1st of October found buyers still flocking into New York from every state in the country. Shrewd men and women these, bargain hunters on a grand scale, armed with the long spoon of business knowledge, they came to skim the cream from factory and workroom products set forth for their inspection.

For years, it had been Emma McChesney's quiet boast that of those whose business brought them to the offices and showrooms of the T. Leum Pedicode Company, the foremost insisted on dealing only with her. She was proud of her following. She liked their loyalty. Their preference for her was the subtlest compliment that was in their power to pay. Ethel Morrissey, whose friendship dated back to the days when Emma McChesney had sold featherlooms through the Middle West, used to say, laughingly, her plump, comfortable shoulders shaking. Emma, if you ever give me away by telling how many years I've been buying featherlooms of you, I'll call down upon you the spinster's curse. Early Monday morning, Mrs. McChesney, coming down the hall from the workroom, encountered Miss Ella Sweeney

of Klein and Company, Des Moines, stepping out of the elevator. A very skittish Miss Sweeney, rustling, pruning, concious of her dangling black earrings, and her rosbriere collar, and her beauty patch. Emma McChesney met this apparition with outstretched, welcoming hand. Ella Sweeney, well, I'd almost given you up. You're late this fall. Come into my office. She led the way, not noticing that Miss Sweeney came reluctantly,

her eyes on the closed door across the way. Sit down, said Emma McChesney, and pulled a chair nearer her desk. No, wait a minute, let me look at you. Now Ella don't try to tell me that that dress came from Des Moines, Iowa. Do I? Why, child, it's distinctive. Miss Sweeney, still standing, smiled a pleased but rather preoccupied smile. Her eyes roved toward the door. Emma Chesney radiating goodwill and energy went on.

Wait till you see our new samples. You'll buy a million dollars worth. Just let me lead you to our new. walk-easy bifurcated skirt. We call it the one-stepers delight. She put a hand on Ella Sweeney's arm, preparatory to guiding her to the showrooms in the rear, but Miss Sweeney's strange reluctance grew into resolve. A blush, as real as it was unaccustomed, rose to her be-powdered cheeks. Is I—that is, Mr. Buck is in, I suppose? Mr. Buck? Oh, yes, he's in? Miss Sweetie's eyes sought the closed door across the hall.

Is that his office? Emma McChesney stiffened a little. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. You have guessed it, she said crisply. Mr. Buck's name is on the door, and you are looking at it. Miss Sweeney looked down, looked up, twiddle the chain about her neck. You want to see Mr. Buck? asked Emma McChesney quietly.

Miss Sweeney simpered down at her glove tips. fluttered her eyelids. Well, yes, I, you see, I bought of him this year, and when you buy of a person, why, naturally you—naturally, I understand. She walked across the hall, through open the door, and met T. A. Buck's glance, coolly. Mr. Buck, Miss Weenie of Des Moines is here, and I am sure you want to see her. This way, Miss Sweeney? Miss Sweeney, sideling, blushing, fluttering, teettered in. Emma McChesney, just before she closed the door, saw a little spasm cross Buck's face. It was gone so quickly, and a radiant smile sat there so reassuringly, that she wondered if she had not been mistaken after all. He had advanced, hand outstretched with Miss Weaney.

It's wonderful to see you again. You're looking. The closed door stifled the rest. Emma McChesney, in her office across the way, stood a moment in the center of the room, her hand covering her eyes. The hearty chrysanthemums still glowed sunnily from their vase. The little room was very quiet, except for the ticking of the smart, leather-en-cased clock on the desk.

The closed door shut out factory and office sounds, and Emma McChesney stood with one hand over her eyes. so Napoleon might have stood after Waterloo. After this first lesson, Mrs. McChesney did not err again. When two days later Miss Sharp of Berg Brothers Omaha breezed in, looking strangely juvenile and distinctly anticipatory, Emma greeted her smilingly and waved her toward the door opposite. Miss Sharp, the erstwhile bristling, was strangely smooth and sleek. She glanced ever so softly, sighed ever so flutteringly,

working side by side with him, seeing him day after day. How have you been able to resist him? Emma Chesney was only human, after all. By remembering that this is a business house, not a matrimonial parlor. The dart found no lodging place in Miss Sharp's sleek armor. She seemed scarcely to have heard. My dear, she whispered, his eyes and his manner you must be what you may call it adamant is that the way you pronounce it you know what i mean oh yes replied emma mchesney evenly i know would you mean

she told herself that she was justified in the righteous contempt which she felt for this sort of thing a heart-breaker a cheap lady-killer whereupon in walked sam bloom of the paris emporium Luth, one of Mrs. McChesney's staunchest admirers and long-tried business friend. The usual thing. Younger than ever, Mrs. McChesney, you're a wonder. Yes, you are. How's business? Same here. Going to have lunch with me today?

Then I'll just run in and see Buck. Say, where's he been keeping himself all these years? Chip off the old block, that boy. So he had the men, too. It was in this frame of mind. that Miss Ethel Morrissey found her on the morning that she came into New York on her semi-annual buying trip. Ethel Morrissey, plump, matronly looking, quiet, with her hair fast graying at the sides, had nothing of the skittish Middle Western buyer about her. She might have passed

for the mother of a brood of six if it were not for her eyes, the shrewd, twinkling, far-sighted, reckoning eyes of the businesswoman. She and Emma M. M. M. M. M. M. mcchesney had been friends from the day that ethel morrissey had bought her first cautious bill of featherlooms her love for emma chesney had much of the maternal in it she felt a personal pride in emma mchessne's work her success her clean reputation her life of self-denial for her son jock when ethel morrissey was planned by her maker she had not been meant to be wasted on the skirt and suit department of a small town door. That broad, gracious breast had been planned as a resting place for heads in need of comfort. Those plump, firm arms were meant to enfold the weak and distressed. Those capable hands should have smoothed, troubled heads and padded plump cheeks, instead of wasting their gifts and folding piles of petticoats and deftly twitching a plate or tuck into place.

She was playing Rosalind in Buskins when she should, have been cast for the nurse. She entered Emma McChesney's office now, in her quiet blue suit and her neat hat, and she looked very sane and cheerful and rosy-cheeked and dependable, at least so Emma McChesney thought, as she kissed her while the plump arms held her close. Ethel Morrissey, the hugging process completed, held her off and eyed her. Well, Emma McChesney, flourish your featherlooms for me. I want to buy and get it over so we can talk. Are you sure that you want to buy of me? asked Emma McChesney a little wearily.

What's the joke? I'm not joking. I thought that perhaps you might prefer to see Mr. Buck this trip. Ethel Morrissey placed one forefinger under Emma McChesney's chin and turned that lady's face toward her and gazed at her long and thoughtfully. The most trying test of courage in the world that, to one whose eyes, fear meeting yours. Emma McChesney, bravest of women, tried to withstand it and failed. The next instant, her head lay on Ethel Morrissey's broad breast.

Her hands were clutching the plumped shoulders. Her cheek was being patted soothingly by the kind hands. Now, now, what is it, dear? Tell Ethel. Yes, I do know, but tell you. me anyway, it'll do you good." And Emma McChesney told her, when she had finished, you bathe your eyes, Emma, and put on your hat and we'll eat.

Oh yes, you will. A cup of tea, anyway. Isn't there some little cool, fool place where I can be comfortable on a hot day like this, where we can talk comfortably. I've got at least an hour's conversation in me." With the first sip of her first cup of tea, Ethel Morrissey began to unload that the that burden of conversation. Emma, this is the best thing that could have happened to you.

Oh, yes, it is. The queer thing about it is that it didn't happen sooner. It was bound to come. You know, Emma, the Lord lets a woman climb just so high up the mountain of success. And then, when she gets too cocky, when she begins to measure her wits and brain and strength against that of men, and finds herself superior, He just taps her smartly on the head and shins, so that she stumbles, falls, and rolls down a few

miles on the road. She has traveled so painfully. He does it just as a gentle reminder to her that she's only a woman, after all. Oh, I know all about this feminist talk. But this thing's been proven. Look at what happened to Joan of Arc and Becky Sharp, and Mary Queen of Scots. and yes, I have been spending my evening's reading. Now stop laughing at your old Ethel, Emma McChesney.

You meant me to laugh, dear whole thing. I don't feel much like it, though. I don't see why I should be reminded of my lowly state. Heaven knows I haven't been so terrifically pleased with myself. Of course, that South American trip was, well, gratifying, but I earned it. For ten years, I lived with you. with my head in a sample trunk, didn't I? I worked hard enough to win the love of all those Westerners. It wasn't all walking dreamily down Main Street, strewing featherlooms along my path.

Ethel Morrissey stirred her second cup of tea, sipped, stirred, smiled, then reached over and patted Emma McChesney's hand. Emma, I'm a wise old party, and I can see that it isn't all peak with you. it's something else, something deeper. Oh, yes, it is. Now let me tell you what happened when T.A. Buck invaded your old-time territory. I was busy up in my department the morning he came in. I had my head in a rack of coats and a henny customer waiting.

But I sensed something stirring, and I stuck my head out of the coat rack in which I was fumbling. The department was a flutter like a poultry, Every woman in it, from the little new swede-stock girl to Gladys Hemingway, who was only working to wear out her old clothes, was standing with her face toward the elevator, and on her face a look that would have made the ordinary doormat marked welcome seem like an insult. I kind of smoothed my back hair because I knew that only one thing could bring that look into a woman's face. and down the aisle came a tall, slim, distinguished-looking, wonderfully tailored,

shammy-gloved, walking-stick, Fifth Avenue person with eyes. Of course I knew. But the other girls didn't. They just sort of fell back at his approach smitten. He didn't even raise an eyebrow to do it. Now, Emma, I'm not exaggerating. I know what effect he had on me and my girls, and for that matter, every other man or woman in the store.

Why, he was a dream, realized to most of them. The shrewd, clever buyer girls know plenty of men, businessmen of the slap-bang, horn-blowing, bluff, good-natured, hello-kid kind, the kind that takes you out to dinner and blows cigar-smoke in your face. Along comes this chap, elegant, well-dressed, and not even conscious of it, polished, suave, smooth, low-voiced, well-bred. why, when he spoke to a girl, it was the subtlest kind of flattering. Can you see little Sadie Harris of Duluth, drawing a mental comparison between Sam Bloom,

the store manager, and this fascinating devil? Sam, red-faced, loud, voiced shirts, leaving it around the sample room, his hat pushed way back on his head, chewing his cigar like mad and wild-eyed for fear he's buying wrong? Why, child, in our town, Nobody carries the cane, except the Elks when they have their annual parade, and old man Shwinkle, who's lame. And yet we all accepted that yellow walking stick of bucks. It belonged to him.

There isn't a shirt buyer in the Middle West that doesn't dream of him all night and push featherlooms in the store all day. Emma, I'm old and fat and fifty, but when I had dinner with him at the Manitoba house that evening, I caught myself making eyes at him, knowing that every woman in the dining room would have given her front teeth to be where I was. After which extensive period, Ethel Morrissey helped herself to her third cup of tea. Emma McChesney relaxed a little and laughed a tremulous little laugh. Oh, well, I suppose I must not hope to combat such formidable rivals as walking sticks, shammie gloves, and eyes. My business arguments are futile compared to those. Ethel Morrissey delivered herself of a last shot.

You're wrong, Emma. Those things helped him, but they didn't sell his line. He sold featherlooms out of salesmanship, and because he sounded convincing and sincere and business-like. And he had the samples. It wasn't all bunk. It was three-quarters business. Those two make an invincible combination.

An hour later, Ethel Morrissey was shrewdly selecting her winter line of featherlooms from the stock in the showrooms of the T.A. Buck Company. They went about their business transaction, these two, with the cool abruptness of men, speaking little, and then only of prices, discounts, dating, shipping. Their luncheon conversation of an hour before seemed an impossibility. You'll have dinner with me tonight, Emma asked, up in my apartment, all cozy? Not tonight, dearie. I'll be in bed by eight. I'm not the girl I used to be. Time was when a New York buying trip was of occasion. Now it's a chore. She took Emma McChesney's hand and patted it.

If you've got something real nice for dinner, though, and you feel like company, why don't you ask somebody else that's lonesome? After which, Ethel Morrissey laughed her wickedest and waved a sudden goodbye, with a last word about seeing her tomorrow. Emma McChesney, her color high, entered her office. It was five o'clock. She cleared her desk in half an hour, breathed a sigh of weariness,

reached for hat and jacket, donned them, and, turning out her lights, closed her door behind her for the day. At that same instant, T.A. Buck slammed his own door and walked briskly down the hall. They met at the elevator. They descended in silence. The street gained, they paused, uncertainly.

Won't you stay down and have dinner with me tonight, Emma? Thanks so much, T.A. Not tonight. I'm sorry. Good night. Good night. She turned away. He stood there in the busy street, looking irresolutely and not at all eagerly in the direction of his club, perhaps or his hotel, or whatever shelter he sought after business hours.

something in his attitude. The loneliness of it, the uncertainty, the indecision, smote Emma McChesney with a great pang. She came swiftly back. I wish you'd come home to dinner with me. I don't know what Annie'll give us, probably bread-pudding. She does when she's left her own devices. But I wish you would.

She looked up at him almost shyly. T.A. Buck took Emma McChesney's arm in a. rather unnecessarily firm grip, and propelled her, surprised and protesting, in the direction of the nearest vacant taxi. But, T.A., this is idiotic. Why take a cab to go home from the office on a weekday? In with you? Besides, I never have a chance to take one from the office on Sunday, do I? Does Annie always cook enough for two? Apparently, Annie did. Annie was something of a witch in her way. She whist about, wrought certain changes, did things with asparagus and mayonnaise, lighted the rose-shaded table candles.

No one noticed that dinner was twenty minutes late. Together they admired the great mahogany buffet that Emma had miraculously found space for in the little dining room. It glows like a great deep ruby, doesn't it? She said proudly. You should see Annie circle about it with the carpet sweeper. She knows one bump would be followed by instant death. Looking back on it afterward, they remembered that the dinner was a very silent one.

They did not notice their wordlessness at the time. Once when the chops came in, Buck said absently, Oh, I had those for— Then he stopped abruptly. Emma McChesney smiled. Your mother trains you well, she said. The October night had grown cool. and he had lighted a wood fire in the living room.

That was what attracted me to this apartment in the first place, Mrs. McChesney said, as they left the dining room. A fireplace, a practical, real wood-burning fireplace in a New York apartment. I'd assign the lease if the plaster had been falling in chunks and the bathtub had been zinc. That's because fireplaces mean home, in our minds, said Buck. He sat, looking into the heart of the glow, there fell another of those comfortable silences.

T.A., I want to tell you that I know I've been acting the cat ever since I got home from South America and found that you had taken charge. You see, you had spoiled me. The thing that has happened to me is the thing that always happens to those who assume to be dictators. I just want you to know now that I'm glad and proud and happy because you have come into your own. It hurt me just at first. That was the pride of me.

I'm quite over that now. You're not only the president of the T.A. Buck Company in name. You're its actual head, and that's as it should be. Long live the king. Buck sat silent a moment, then. I had to do it, Emma. She looked up. You have a wonderful brain, said Buck then,

and the two utterances seem connected in his mind. mind. They seemed to bring no great satisfaction to the woman to whom he addressed them, however. She thanked him dryly, as women do when their brain is dragged into an intimate conversation. But, said Buck, and suddenly stood up, looking at her very intently. It isn't for your mind that I love you this minute. I love you for your eyes, Emma, and for your mouth. You have the tenderest, most womanly sweet mouth in the world, and for your hair, and the way your chin curves. I love you for your throat-line, for the way you walk and talk and sit, for the way you look at me, and for the way you don't look at me. He reached down and gathered Emma McChesney, the alert, the

aggressive, the capable, into his arms. Quite as men gather the clingingest kind of woman. And now, suppose you tell me, just why and how you love me. And Emma McChesney told him. When at last he was leaving, don't you think, asked Emma McChesney, her hands on his shoulders, that you overdid the fascination thing just the least little bit there on the road? Well, but you told me to entertain them, didn't you? Yes, reluctantly. But I didn't tell you to consecrate your life to him, The ordinary fat, middle-aged, everyday traveling man will never be able to sell featherlooms in the Middle West again. They won't have him.

They'll never be satisfied with anything less than John drew after this. Emma McChesney, you're not marrying me because a lot of overdressed, giggling, skittish old girls have taken a fancy to make eyes at me, are you? Emma McChesney stood up very straight and tall. I'm marrying you, T.A., because you are a great, big, fine, upstanding, tender, wonderful. Oh, well, then that's all right. Broke in Buck a little tremulously. Emma McChesney's face grew serious. But promise me one thing, T.A.

Promise me that when you come home for dinner at night, you'll never say, Good heavens, I had that for lunch. End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of Emma McChesney and Company by Edna Ferber This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Phil Schenever. Chapter 3. A Closer Corporation. Front offices resemble back kitchens in this way.

They have always an ear at the keyhole, an eye at the crack, a nose in the air. But between the ordinary front office and the front office of the T.A. Buck-featherloom Pedicode Company, there was a difference. the employees at buck's from emil the errand boy to old pop henderson who had started as aaron boy himself twenty-five years before possessed the quality of loyalty they were loyal to the memory of old man buck because they had loved and respected him they were loyal to mrs emma mchesney because she was mrs emma mchesney which amounts to the same reason they were loyal to t a buck because he was his father's son for three weeks the first Front office had been bewildered. From bewilderment it passed to worry. A worried, bewildered front office is not an efficient front office. Ever since Mrs. McChesney had come off the road at the death of old T.A. Buck, to assume the secretorship of the company which she had served

faithfully for ten years, she had set an example for the entire establishment. She was the pacemaker. Every day of her life, she figuratively. Alternatively, press the electric button that set the wheels to whirring. At 9 a.m. sharp she appeared, erect, brisk alert, vibrating energy. Usually the office staff had not yet swung into its gate. In a desultory way, it had been getting into its satine sleevelets, adjusting its eye-shades, uncovering its typewriter, opening its ledgers, bringing out its files. Then, down the hall would come the sound of a firm, light, buoyant step.

An electric thrill would pass through the front office. Then the sunny, sincere, good morning! Morning, Mrs. McChasney, the front office would chorus back. The day had begun for the T.A. Buck-Fetherloom pedicote company. Hortense, the blonde stenographer, engaged to the shipping clerk, noticed it first. The psychology of that is interesting. Hortense knew. that by 9.30, Mrs. McChesney's desk would be clear, and that the buzzer would summon her.

Hortense didn't mind taking dictation from T.A. Buck, though his method was hesitating and jerky, and he was likely to employ quite casually a baffling and unaccustomed word, over which Hortense's scampering pencil would pause, struggle desperately, then race on. Hortense often was in for a quick, furtive session with her pocket dictionary after one of T.A.'s periods. But, with Mrs. McChesney, dictation was a joy. She knew what she wanted to say, and she always said it. The words she used were short, clean-cut, meaningful Anglo-Saxon words. She never used, received, when she could use that. Hers was the rapid-fire-gun method, each word sharp, well-timed, efficient. Imagine then, Hortense, staring wide-eye,

and puzzled at a floundering, hesitating, absent-minded Mrs. McChesney. A Mrs. McChesney strangely story as to eyes, strangely dreamy as to mood, decidedly deficient as to dictation. Imagine a hortense with pencil poised in air a full five minutes, waiting until Mrs. Mitchesney should come to herself with a start, frown, smile vaguely, pass a hand over her eyes and say, let me see, where was I? And we find, on referring to your order, that the goods you mention, Hortense would prompt patiently.

Oh, yes, of course, with an effort. Hartense was beginning to grow alarmed. In T.A. Buck's office, just across the hall, the change was quite as noticeable, but in another way. His leisurely drawl was gone. His deliberate manner was replaced by a brisk, quick-thinking, quick-speaking one. his words were brief and to the point he seemed to be riding on the crest of an excitement wave and as he dictated he smiled hortense stood it for a week then she unburdened herself to miss kelly the assistant bookkeeper miss kelly evinced no surprise at her disclosures i was just talking about it to pop yesterday she acts worried doesn't she and yet not exactly worried either do you suppose it can be that son of hers what's his name

hortense shook her head no he's all right she had a letter from him yesterday he's got a grand position in chicago and he's going to marry that girl he was so stuck on here and it isn't that even if you're not that even if you're not that even if he's got a grand position in chicago and he's going to marry that girl he was so stuck on here and it isn't that either, because Mrs. McChesney likes her. I can tell by the way she talks about her. I ought to know. Look how Henry Smar acted toward me when we were first engaged. The front office buzzed with it. It crept into the workroom, into the shipping room. It penetrated the frowsy head of Jake the elevator man. As the days went on and the tempo of the front office slackened with that of the two bright little inner offices, only one member of the whole staff remained unmoved, incurious taciturn. Pop Henderson listened, one scant old eyebrow raised knowingly, a whimsical half-smile screwing up his wriggled face.

At the end of three weeks, Hartence, with that display of temperament so often encountered in young ladies of her profession, announced in desperation that, if this thing kept on, she was going to forget herself and jeopardize her position by demanding to know outright what the trouble was. From the direction of Pop Henderson's Inky Retreat, there came the sound of a dry chuckle. Pop Henderson had been chuckling in just that way for three weeks now. It was getting on the nerves of his colleagues. If you ever spring the joke that's kept you giggling for a month, snapped Hortense, it'll break up the office.

Pop Henderson removed his eye-shade very deliberately, past his thin, cramped old hand over his scant gray locks to his ball-spot, climbed down stiffly from his stool, ambled to the center of the room, and head cocked like a knowing old brown sparrow, regarded the pert hortense over his spectacles, and under his spectacles, and finally through his spectacles. Young folks nowadays began Pop Henderson dryly. or so darn cute knowing that when an old fellow cuts in ahead of him for once,

he likes to hug the joke to himself a while before he springs it. There was no acid in his tone. He was beaming very benignantly down upon the little blonde stenographer. You say that Mrs. Mack is absent-minded-like and dreamy, and that young T.A. acts like he swallowed an electric battery. Well, when it comes to that, I've seen you many a time when you didn't know anyone was looking, just sitting there at your typewriter with your hands kind of poised halfway, and your lips sort of parted, and your eyes just gazing away somewhere off in the distance for fifteen minutes at a stretch. And out there in the shipping room, Henry's singing like a whole menstrual troop all day long, when he isn't whistling so loud you can hear him over for his eighth avenue.

then as the red surged up through the girl's fair skin well drawled old pop henderson and the dry chuckle threatened again well why pop henderson exploded miss kelly from her cage why pop henderson in those six words the brisk and agile-minded miss kelly expressed the surprise and the odd conviction of the office staff Pop Henderson trotted over to the water-cooler, drew a brimming-glass, drank it off, and gave vent to a great exhaustive breath. He tried not to strut as he crossed back to his desk, climbed his stool, adjusted his eye-shade, and with the last throaty chuckle, plunged into his books again. But his words already were working their wonders. The office, after the first shock, was flooded with a new atmosphere. a subtle, pervasive air of hushed happiness, of tender solicitude.

It went about like a mother who has found her child asleep at play, and who steals away a tiptoe, finger on lip, lips smiling tenderly. The delicate antenna of Emma McChesney's mind sensed the change. Perhaps she read something in the glowing eyes of her sister in love, Hortense. Perhaps she caught a new tone in Miss Kelly's voice, are the four-women's perhaps a whisper from the outer office reached her desk the very afternoon of pop henderson's electrifying speech mrs mchesney crossed to t a buck's office shut the door after her lowered her voice discreetly and said t a thereon what makes you think so nothing that is nothing definite no man reason just a woman reason t a buck strolled over to-a her smiling.

I haven't known you all this time, without having learned that that's reason enough. And if they really do know, I'm glad. But we didn't want them to know—not yet— Until—until just before the—T.A. Buck laid his hands lightly on Emma McChesney's shoulders. Emma McChesney promptly reached up and removed them. "'There you are!' exclaimed Buck and rammed the offending hands into his pockets. That's why I'm glad they know. If they really do know, I'm no actor.

I'm a skirt and lingerie manufacturer. For the last six weeks, instead of being allowed to look at you with the expression that a man naturally wears when he's looking at the woman he's going to marry, what have I had to do? Glare, that's what? Scowl. Act like a captain of finance when I felt like a Romeo. I've had to be very dry, terse, business-like, when I was bursting with adjectives,

that had nothing to do with business. You've avoided my office as you would a small-pox camp. You greeted me with a what can I do for you, air, when I've dared to invade yours. You couldn't have been less cordial to a book agent. If it weren't for those two hours you grant me in the evening, I'd—I'd blow up with a loud report, that's what. I'd—

Now T.A., interrupted Emma McChesney soothingly, and patted one gesticulating arm. It has been a bit of a strain for both of us, but you know we agreed it would be best this way. We've ten days more to go. Let's stick it out as we've begun. It has been best for us, for the office, for the business. The next time you find yourself choked up with a stock of fancy adjectives, write a sonnet to me. Work him off that way.

T.A. Buck stood silent a moment, regarding her with a concentration that would have unnerved, a woman less poised. Emma McChesney, when you talk like that, so coolly, so evenly, so darned mentally, I sometimes wonder if you really don't say it, T.A., because you don't mean it. I've had to fight for most of my happiness. I've never before found it ready at hand. I've always had to dig for it with a shovel and a spade and a pickaxe, and then blast. I had almost twenty years of that from the time I was eighteen until I was thirty-eight.

It taught me to take my happiness seriously and my troubles lightly. She shot her eyes for a moment, and her voice was very low and very deep, and very vibrant. So when I'm coolest and evenest and most mental, T.A., you may know that I've struck gold. A great glow illuminated Buck's fine eyes. He took two quick steps in her direction, but Emma McChesney, one hand on the doorknob, warned him off with the other. Hey, wait a minute, pleaded Buck. Can't?

I have a fitting of the tailors at 3.30, my new suit. Wait till you see it. The dickens you have. But so have I. He jerked out his watch. At 3.30. It's the suit I'm going to wear when I travel as a blushing bridegroom. So's mine.

And look here, T.A. We can't both leave this place for a fitting. It's absurd. If this keeps on, it will break up the business. We'll have to get married one at a time. Or at least get our trousseau one at a time. What's your suit? Sort of brown. Brown? So's mine. Good heavens, T.A. We'll look like a menstrual troop. Buckside resignedly. If I telephone my tailor that I can't make it until 4.30, Will you promise to be back by that time? Yes, but remember, if your bride appears in a skirt that sags in the back, or a coat that bunches across the shoulders, the crime will lie at your door.

So it was that the lynx-eyed office staff began to wonder if, after all, Pop Henderson was the wizard that he claimed to be. During working hours, Mrs. Machesney held rigidly to business. Her handsome partner tried bravely to follow her example. If he failed occasionally, perhaps Emma McChesney was not so displeased as she pretended to be. A business discussion, deeply interesting to both, was likely to run thus. Buck entering her office briskly papers in hand. Mrs. McChesney, I have here a letter from Singer and French, Columbus, Ohio.

They ask for an extension. They've had 90 days. that's enough that firm's slow pay and always will be until old singer has the good taste and common sense to retire it isn't because the stock doesn't move singer simply believes in not paying for anything until he has to if i were you i'd write him that this is a business house not a charitable institution no don't do that it isn't politic but you know what i mean hmm yes a silence Emma, that's a fiendishly becoming gown. Now, T.A., but it is. It's so kind of loose, and yet clinging, and those white collar and cuff things. T.A. Buck, I've worn this thing down to the office every day for a month.

It shines in the back. Besides, you promised not to—oh, darn it all, Emma, I'm human, you know. How do you suppose I can stand here and look at you and not— Emma McChesney, pressing the buzzer that summons, Hortense. You know, Tim, I don't exactly hate you this morning either. But business is business. Stop looking at me like that.

Then, to Hortense in the doorway. Just take this letter, Miss Dotes. Singer in French, Columbus, Ohio, dear sirs, yours of the tenth at hand, period, regarding your request for further extension. We wish to say that, in view of the fact, T.A. Buck. half resentful half amused wholly admiring would disappear but hartent's eyes demurely cast down at her notebook was not deceived

say she confided to miss kelly they think they've got me fooled but i'm wise don't i know when henry passes through the office here from the shipping-room he looks at me just as cool and indifferent before we announced it we had you all guessing didn't we but i can see something back of that look that the rest of you can't get well when mr buck looks at her i can see the same thing in his eyes say when it comes to seeing the love of you can't get well when mr buck looks at her i can see the same thing in his eyes say when it comes to seeing the love light through the fog, I'm there with a spy-glass. If Emma McChesney held herself well-en-leashed during the busy day, she relished her happiness nonetheless when she could allow herself the full savour of it. When a girl of eighteen, she had married a man of the sort that must put whiskey into his stomach before the machinery of his day would take up its creaking round. Out of the degradation of that marriage, she had emerged triumption.

confidently, sweet and unsullied, and she had succeeded in bringing her son, Jock McChesney, out into the clear sunlight with her. The evening spent with T.A. Buck, the man of fine instincts, of breeding, of proven worth, of rare tenderness, filled her with great peace and happiness. When doubts assailed her, it was not for herself but for him. Sometimes the fear would clutch at her as they sat before the fire in the sitting-room of her comfortable little apartment. She would voice those fears for the very joy of having them stilled. T.A., this is too much happiness. I'm afraid. After all, you're a young man,

though you are a bit older than I in actual years, but men of your age marry girls of 18. You're handsome, and you've brains, family, breeding, money. Any girl in New York would be glad to marry you. those tall slim exquisite young girls young and well-bred and poised and fresh and sweet and lovable you see them every day on fifth avenue exquisitely dressed entirely desirable they make me feel old old and battered i've sold goods on the road i've fought and worked and struggled and it has left its mark i did it for the boy god bless him and i'm glad i did it for the boy god bless him and i'm glad i did it. But it put me out of the class of that girl you see on— Yes, Emma, you're not at all in the class with that girl you see every day on Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue's full of her, hundreds of her, thousands of her. Perhaps five years ago before I had worked side by side with you, I might have been attracted by that girl you see every day on

Fifth Avenue? You don't see a procession of Emma McChesney's every day on Fifth Avenue, not by a long shot. Why? Because there's only one of her. She doesn't come in dozen lots. I know that that girl you see every day on Fifth Avenue is all that I deserve. But by some heaven-sent miracle, I'm to have this Emma McChesney woman.

I don't know how it came to be true. I don't deserve it. But it is true, and that's enough for me. Emma McChesney would look up at him, eyes wet, mouth-smiling. T.A. Your balm and myrrh and incense and meat and drink to me. I wish I had words to tell you what I'm thinking now, but I haven't, so I'll just cover it up. We both know it's there, and I'll tell you that you make love like a movie hero. Yes, you do. Better than a movie hero, because in the films,

The heroine always has to turn to face the camera, which makes it necessary for him to make love down the back of her neck. But T.A. Buck was unsmiling. Don't trifle Emma. And don't think you can fool me that way. I haven't finished. I want to settle this Fifth Avenue creature for all time. What I have to say is this.

I think you are more attractive, finer, bigger, more rounded in character and manner, slower, sweeter, sounder, with all your angles and corners rubbed smooth, saner, better poised, than any woman I have ever known, and what I am today you have made me, directly and indirectly, by association and by actual orders, by suggestion, and by direct contact. What you did for Jock, purposefully and by force, you did for me, too, not so directly, perhaps, but with the same result. Emma McChesney, you've made, actually made, molded, shaped, and turned out two men. You're the greatest sculpture that ever lived.

You can make a scarecrow in a field, get up and achieve. Everywhere one sees women overwrought, overstimulated, eager, tense. When there appears one, who has herself in leash, balanced, tolerant, poised, sane, composed, she restores your faith in things. lean on her spiritually. I know I need you more than you need me, Emma, and I know you won't love me the less for that. There, that's about all for this evening. I think, breathed Emma Chesney in a choked little voice, that that's about enough. Two days before the date set for their very quiet wedding, they told the heads of office and workroom. Office and workroom,

somewhat moist as to eye and flushed as to cheek, and highly congratulatory, proved their knowingness by promptly presenting to their employers a very costly and unbelievably hideous set of mantle ornaments and clock, calculated to strike horror in the heart of any woman who has lovingly planned the furnishing of her drawing-room. Pop Henderson, after some preliminary wrestling with collar, necktie, spectacles, and voice, launched forth on a presentation speech that threatened to close down the works for the day. Emma McChesney heard it, tears in her eyes. T.A. Buck nod his mustache.

And when Pop Henderson's cracked old voice broke all together in the passage that touched on his departed employer, old T.A. Buck, and the great happiness that this occasion would have brought him, Emma's hand met young T.A.'s and rested there. Hortense and Henry, standing very close together all through this beach, had, in this respect, anticipated their employers by several minutes. They were to be away two weeks only. No one knew just where, except that some small part of the trip was to be spent on a flying

visit to young Jock McChesney out in Chicago. He himself was to be married very soon. Emma McChesney had rather startled her very good-looking husband to be, by whirling about it him with, T.A., do you realize that you're very likely to be a step-grandfather some fine day not so far away? T.A. had gazed at her, for a rather shocked moment, swallowed hard, smiled, and said, even that doesn't scare me, Emma. Everything had been planned, down to the last detail. Mrs. McChesney's little apartment had been sub-leased, and a very smart one was taken and furnished almost complete.

with Annie installed in the kitchen and a demure parlor-maid engaged. When we come back we'll come home. T.A. Buck had said, home. There had been much to do, but it had all been done smoothly and expertly, on the direction of these two who had learned how to plan direct and carry out. Then, on the last day, Emma McChesney visibly perturbed, entered her partner's office a letter in her hand. "'This is ghastly,' she exclaimed. Buck pulled out a chair for her.

Klein canceled his order again. No, and don't ask me to sit down. Be thankful that I don't blow up. Is it as bad as that? Bad. Here, read that. No, don't read it. I'll tell you.

It'll relieve my feelings. You know how I've been angling and scheming and contriving and plotting for years to get an exclusive order from gauge and fostering. Of course we've had a nice little order every few months. But what's that from the biggest mail-order house in the world? And now, out of a blue sky, comes this bolt from O'Malley, who buys our stuff, saying that he's coming on the tenth, that's next week, that he's planned to establish our line with their trade,

and that he wants us to be prepared for a record-breaking order. I've fairly prayed for this, and now what shall we do? Do smoothly. Just write the gentleman and tell him you're busy getting married this week and next, and that by a singular coincidence your partner is similarly engaged, and that our manager will attend to him with all care and courtesy unless he can postpone his trip until I return. Suggests that he call around a week or two later.

T.A. Buck, I know it isn't considered good form to rage and glare at one's fiance on the eve of one's wedding day. If this were a week earlier or a week later, I'd be tempted to shake you. Buck stood up, came over to her and laid a hand very gently on her arm. With the other hand, he took the letter from her fingers. Emma, you're tired and a little excited. You've been under an unusual physical and mental strain for the last few weeks. Give me that letter. I'll answer it. This kind of thing, he held up the letter. He held up the has meant everything to you. If it had not, where would I be today? But tonight, Emma, it doesn't mean a thing, not one thing. Slowly, Emma McChesney's tense body relaxed. A great sigh

that had in it weariness and relief and acquiescence came from her. She smiled, ever so faintly. I've been a ramrod so long, it's going to be hard to learn to be a clinging vine. I've been my own support for so many years. I don't use a trellis very gracefully yet, but I think I'll get the hang of it very soon. She turned toward the door, crossed to her own office, looked all about at the orderly ship-shaped room that reflected her personality,

as did any room she occupied. Just the same, she called out over her shoulder to buck in the doorway. I hate like fury to see that order slide. In hat and coat and furs she stood a moment, her fingers on the electric switch, her eyes very bright and wide. The memories of ten years, fifteen years, twenty years, crowded up around her and filled the little room. Some of them were golden, and some of them were black.

Few had power to frighten her even now. So she turned out the light, stood for just another moment there in the darkness, then stepped out into the hall, closed the door softly behind her, and stood face to face with the lettering on the glass panel of the door. The lettering that spelled the name Mrs. McChesney. T. A. Buck watched her in silence. She reached up with one wavering forefinger, and touched each of the twelve letters, one after the other. Then she spread her hand wide, blotting out the second word. And when she turned away, one saw, she being Emma McChesney and a woman, and very tired and rather sentimental, and a bit

hysterical, and altogether happy, that though she was smiling, her eyes were wet. In her ten years on the road, visiting town after town, catching trains, jolting about in rumbling hotel buses, or musty-smelling small-town hacks, living in hotels good, bad, and indifferent, Emma McChesney had come upon hundreds of rice-strewn, ribbon-bedecked bridal couples. She had leaned from her window at many a railway station to see the barbaric and cruel old custom of bride-and-bride-groom baiting. She had smiled very tenderly, and rather sadly, and hopefully, too, upon the boy and girl who rushed breathless into the car in a flurry of white-streamers, flowers, old shoes,

laughter, cheers, last messages. Now, as in a dream, she found herself actually of these. Of rice, old shoes, and bandage, there had been none, it is true. She stood quietly by while Buck attended to their trunks, just as she had seen it done by hundreds of helpless little cotton-wool women who had never checked a trunk in their lives. She, who had spent ten years of her life, wrestling with trunks and baggagemen and porters, Once there was some trifling mistake, Buck's fault.

Emma, with her experience of the road, saw his error. She could have set him right with the word. It was on the tip of her tongue, by sheer force of will. She withheld that word, fought back the almost overwhelming inclination to take things in hand set them right. It was just an incident, almost trifling in itself, but its import was tremendous. for her conduct that moment shaped the happiness of their future life together. Emma had said that there would be no rude awakenings for them, no startling shocks.

There isn't a thing we don't know about each other, she had said. We each know the other's weaknesses and strength. I hate the way you gnaw your mustache when you're troubled, and I think the fuss you make when the waiter pours your coffee without first having given you sugar and cream, It's the most absurd thing I've ever seen. But then I know how it annoys you to see me sitting with one slipper dangling from my toe when I'm particularly comfortable and snug.

You know how I like my eggs and you think it's immoral. I suppose we're really set in our ways. It's going to be interesting to watch each other's shift. Just the same, Buck said. I didn't dream there was any woman living who could actually. make a Pullman drawing-room look home-like. Any woman who spends a fourth of her life in hotels and trains learns that trick. She has, too.

If she happens to be the sort that likes books and flowers and sewing, she carries some of each with her, and one book, one rose, one piece of unfinished embroidery, would make an oasis in the Sahara Desert look home-like. It was on the westbound train that they encountered Sam. Sam of the rolling eye, the genial grin, the deft hand. Sam was known to every hardened traveler as the porter deluxe of the road. Sam was a diplomat, a financier, and a rascal.

He never forgot a face. He never forgave a meager tip. The passengers who traveled with him were at once his guests and his victims. Therefore his, "'Good evening, Miss Macheteen, ma'am, good evening. Well, it certainly has been a long time since I had the pleasure of your presence as passenger, ma'am. I show am. The slim, elegant figure of T.A. Buck appeared in the doorway.

Sam's rolling eye became a thing on ball bearings. His teeth flashed startlingly white in the broadest of grins. He took Buck's hat, ran a finger under its inner band, and shook it very gently. What's the idea? inquired Buck, genially. Are you a combination porter and press the digitator? Sam chuckled his infectious negro chuckle. Well, no, sir.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that, sir, but I have been known to shake rice out of a gentleman's ordinary everyday black derby hat. Get out, laughed T.A. Buck. As Sam ducked. You may as well get used to it, smiled Emma, because I'm known to every train conductor, porter, hotel clerk, chambermaid and bellboy between here and the Great Lakes. It was Sam who proved himself hero of the honeymoon,

for he saved T.A. Buck from continuing his journey to Chicago bridless. Fifteen minutes earlier, Buck had gone to the buffet car for a smoke. At Cleveland, Emma, looking out of the car window, saw a familiar figure pacing up and down the station platform. It was that dapper and important little Irishman, O'Malley, buyer for Gage and Fostick, the greatest mail-order house in the world. O'Malley, whose letter T.A. Buck had answered. O'Malley, whose order meant thousands. He was on his way to New York, of course. In that moment, Mrs. T. A. Buck faded into the background,

and Emma McChesney rose up in her place. She snatched hat and coat and furs, put them on as she went down the long aisle, swung down the car steps, and flew down the platform to the unconscious O'Malley. He was smoking all unconscious. The Fates had delivered him into her expert hands. She knew those kindly sisters of old, and she was the last to refuse their lorgesse. Mr. O'Malley, he wheeled. Mrs. McChesney, he had just a charming trace of a brogue. His enemies said he assumed it. Well, who was I thinking of but you a minute ago? What? I'm on my way to Chicago.

Saw you from the car window. You're on the New York train? I thought so. Tell me. You're surely seeing our man, aren't you? O'Malley's smiling face clouded. He was a temperamental Irishman, Ted O'Malley, with ideas on the deference due him and his great house.

I'll tell you the truth, Mrs. Machesney. I had a letter from your Mr. Buck. It wasn't much of a letter to a man like me representing a house like Gage and Faustick. It said both heads of the firm would be out of town, and would I see the manager? Me! The manager! Well, thinks I. If that's how important they think my order, then they'll not get it, that's all. I've never yet—

Dear Mr. O'Malley, please don't be offended. As a McChesney to an O'Malley, I want to tell you that I've just been married. Married. God bless me to—to T.A. Buck, of course. He's on that train. He—she turned toward the train, and as she turned, it began to move ever so gently. At the same moment there sped toward her with unbelievable swiftness, the figure of Sam the porter, his eyes all whites.

By one arm he grasped her, and half carried, half jerked her to the steps of the moving train, swung her up to the steps like a bundle of rags, caught the rail by a miracle, and stood, grinning and triumphant, gazing down at the panting O'Malley, who was running alongside the train. Back in a week, will you wait for us in New York? Called Emma, her breath coming fast. She was trembling, too, and laughing. Will I wait?

Call back the puffing O'Malley. Every bit of the Irish in him beaming from his eyes. I'll be there when you get back. As short as your name is Mick Buck. From his pocket, he took a round silver western dollar, and still running, tossed it to the toothy Sam. That peerless porter caught it, twirled it, kissed it, bowed and grinned afresh as the train glided out of the shed. Emma flushed, smiling, flew up the aisle. Buck listened to her laughing, triumphant account of her hair-breath, Haram-scarum adventure, frowned before he smiled,

Emma, how could you do it? At least, why didn't you send back for me first?" Emma smiled a little tremulously. Don't be angry. You see, dear boy, I've only been your wife for a week, but I've been feather-loom petticoats for over fifteen years. It's a habit. Just how strong and fixed a habit. She proved to herself a little more than a week later. It was the morning of their first breakfast in the new apartment. You would have thought, to see them over their coffee and eggs and rolls, that they had been breakfasting together thus for years. Annie was so at home in her new kitchen, the deaf little maid in her crisp white, fitted so perfectly into the picture. Perhaps the thing that T.A. Buck said, once the maid left them

alone, might have given an outside of the queue. You remind me of a sweet pea, Emma, one of those crisp, erect, golden-white, fresh, fragrant sweet peas. I think it is the slenderest, sweetest, neatest, tremest flower in the world, so delicately set on its stem, and yet so straight, so independent. T.A. You say such dear things to me. No, they had not been breakfasting together for years. I'm glad you're not one of those women who wears a frowsy, lacy, ribony, What do you call him Boudoir Cap, down to breakfast?

They always make me think of uncombed hair. That's just one reason why I'm glad. And I'm glad, said Emma, looking at his clear eyes and steady hand and firm skin, for a number of reasons, one of them is that you're not the sort of man who's a grouch at breakfast. When he had hat and coat and stick in hand, and had kissed her goodbye and reached the door and opened it, he came back again as is the way of bridegrooms but at last the door closed behind him emma sat there for a moment listening to his quick light step down the corridor to the opening of the lift door to its metallic closing She sat there in the sunshiny dining-room, in her fresh white morning gown. She picked up her newspaper, opened it, scanned it, put it down.

For years now she had read her newspaper in little gulps on the way downtown, in crowded subway or streetcar. She could not accustom herself to this leisurely scanning of the pages. She rose, went to the window, came back to the table, stood there a moment, her eyes fixed on something far away. The swinging door between dining-room and Butler's pantry opened. Annie, in her neat blue-and-white stripes, stood before her. Shall it be steak or chops tonight, Mrs. McBuck?

Emma turned her head in Andy's direction, then her eyes. The two actions were distinct and separate. Stake or—there was a little bewildered look in her eyes. Her mind had not yet focused on the question. Steak? Oh, oh, yes, of course. Why, why, Annie? And the splendid thousand HP mind brought itself down to the settling of this butter-churning to HP question.

Why, Annie, considering all things, I think we'll make it fillet with mushrooms. End of chapter three. Chapter four of Emma McChesney and Company by Edna Fur. This Libra Box recording is in the public domain. Recording by Phil Schoever. Chapter 4. Blue Surge For ten years, Mrs. Emma Machesney's home had been a wardrobe trunk. She had taken her family life at second-hand.

Four nights out of the seven, her bed was lower eight. And her breakfast, as many mornings, a cinder-strewn, lukewarm horror, taken tete-a-tete with a sleepy-eyed stranger, and presided over. by a white-coated, black-faced bandit to whom a coffee-slopped saucer was a matter of course. It had been her habit during those ten years on the road as traveling saleswoman for the T.A. Buck-Fertholeum Petacode Company to avoid the discomfort of the rapidly chilling car by slipping early into her berth. There, in kimono, if not in comfort, she would shut down the electric light with a snap, raise the shade, and propped up on one else.

low-bow watch the little towns go by they had a wonderful fascination for her those middle western towns whose very names had a comfortable home-like sound sandusky galesburg crawfordsville appleton very real towns with very real people in them peering wistfully out through the dusk she could get little intimate glimpses of the home life of these people as the night came on in those modest frame-houses near the station they need not trouble to pull down the shades as must their cautious city cousins as the train slowed down there could be a glimpse of a matronly housewife moving deftly about in the kitchen's warm yellow glow a man reading a paper in slippered shirt-sleeved comfort a pig-tailed girl at the piano a woman with a baby in her arms or a family group perhaps seated about the table deep in an after-suffer conclave. It had made her homeless as she was homesick. Emma always liked that picture best. Her keen imaginative mind could sense the scene, could actually follow the trend of the talk during this

the most genial, homely, soul-chering hour of the day. The trifling events of the last twelve hours in schoolroom, in store, in office, in street, in kitchen, loom up large as they are rehearsed in that magic, animated, cozy moment just before Ma says with a sigh, well, folks, go on into the sitting-room. Me and Nellie have got to clear away. Just silhouettes, as the train flashed by, these small-town people, but very human, very enviable to Emma McChesney. They're real, she would say. They're regular three meals a day people. I've been peeking in at their windows for ten years, and I've learned that it is in these towns that folks really live.

The difference between life here and life in New York is the difference between area and depth. Do you see what I mean? In New York they live by the mile, and here they live by the cubic foot. Well, I'd rather have just one juicy, thick club steak than a whole platterful of quarter-inch. It's the same idea. To one of her business colleagues whose habit it was to lounge in the hotel window with sneering comment upon the small-town procession as it went by, Emma McChesney had been wont to say, don't sneer at Main Street. When you come to think of it, isn't it true that Fifth Avenue, any bright winter afternoon between four and six, is only Main Street on a busy day multiplied by 1,000?

"'Emma Chesney was not the sort of woman to rail at a fate that had placed her in the harness "'instead of in the carriage. "'But during all the long years of uphill pull, "'from the time she started with a humble salary in the office of the T.A. Buck-Fetherloon pedicode company, through the years spent on the road, up to the very time when the crown of success came to her in the form of the secretarieship of the prosperous firm of T.A. Buck, there was a minor but fixed ambition in her heart. That same ambition is to be found deep down in the heart of every woman whose morning costume is a tailor-suit,

whose newspaper must be read in hurried snatches on the way downtown in crowded train or car, and to whom 9 a.m. spells business. In fifteen years, Emma Chesney used to say, I've never known what it is to lull in leisure. I've never had a chance to luxuriate. Sunday, to a working woman, Sunday is for the purpose of repairing the ravages of the other six days. By the time you've washed your brushes,

mended your skirt braid, darned your stockings and gloves, looked for gray hairs and crow's feet, and skimmed the magazine section, It's Monday. It was small wonder that Emma McChesney's leisure had been limited. In those busy years she had not only earned the living for herself and her boy, she had trained that boy into manhood and placed his foot on the first rung of business success.

She had transformed the T.A. Buck-Fetherloom Pedicote Company from a placidly mediocre concern to a thriving, flourishing, nationally known institution. All this might have turned another woman's head. It only served to set Emma McChesneys more splendidly on her shoulders. Not too splendidly, however, for with her marriage to her handsome business partner, T.A. Buck, that well-set, independent head, was found to fit very cozily into the comfortable hollow formed by T.A. Buck's right arm. Emma, Buck had said just before their marriage,

What is the arrangement to be after? After just what it is now, I suppose, Emma had replied. Except that we'll come down to the office together. He had regarded her thoughtfully for a long minute. Then, Emma, for three months after our marriage, will you try being just Mrs. T.A. Buck? You mean no factory? No featherlooms?

No dictation? No business bothers? Her voice was a rising sky. of surprise. Just try it for three months, with the privilege of a lifetime if you like it. But try it. I—I'd like to see you there when I leave, Emma. I'd like to have you there when I come home.

I suppose I sound like a selfish Turk, but—you sound like a regular husband. Emma McChesney had interrupted, and I love you for it. Now listen to you. For three whole months, I'm going to be what the yellow novels used to call you. a doll wife. I'm going to meet you at the door every night with a rose in my hair. I shall wear pink things with lace ruffles on them. Don't you know that I've been longing to do just those things for years and years?

I'm going to blossom out into a beauty. Watch me. I've never had time to study myself. I'll hold shades of yellow and green and flesh color up to my face to see which brings out the right tints. I'm going to gaze at myself through half-closed eyes to see which shade produces tawny lights in my hair. Ever since I can remember, I've been so busy that it has been a question of getting the best possible garments in the least possible time for the smallest possible sum. In that case, one gets blue serge. I've worn blue serge until it feels like a convict's uniform.

I'm going to blossom out into fawn and green and mauve. I shall get evening dresses with only bead shoulder straps. I'm going to shop. I've never really seen Fifth Avenue between eleven and one when the real people come out. My views of it have been at 9 a.m. when the office workers are going to work, and at 5.30 when they are going home, I will now cease to observe the proletariat and mingle with the predatory. I'll probably go in for those tiffin things at the plaza. If I do, I'll never be the same woman again.

Whereupon she paused with dramatic effect. To all of which T.A. Buck had replied, Go as far as you like. Take fencing lessons if you want to. Or Sanskrit. You've been a queen bee for so many years that I think the role of a drone will be a pleasant change. Let me shoulder the business worries for a while.

you've borne them long enough. It's a bargain. For three months I shall do nothing more militant than to pick imaginary threads off your coat lapel and pout when you mention business. At the end of those three months we'll go into private session, compare notes, and determine whether the plan shall cease or become permanent.

Shake hands on it. They shook hands solemnly. As they did so, a faint shadow of doubt hovered far, far back in the depths of T.A. Buck's fine eyes, and a faint, inscrutable smile lurked in the corners of Emma's lips. So it was that Emma Chesney, the alert, the capable, the brisk, the business-like, assume the role of Mrs. T.A. Buck, the leisurely, the languid, the elegant. She, who formerly at eleven in the morning, might have been seen bent on selling the best possible bill of spring

featherlooms to Joe Greenbaum of Keukuk, Iowa, could now be found in a Modeste's gray and raspberry salon, being draped and pinned and fitted. She, whose dynamic force once charged the entire office and factory with energy and efficiency, now distributed a tithe of that priceless figure here, a tithe there, a tithe everywhere, and thus broke the very backbone of its power. She had never been a woman to do things by halves. What she undertook to do, she did thoroughly and wholeheartedly. This principle, she applied to her new mode of life as rigidly as she had to the old. That first month slipped magically by. Emma was too much a woman not to feel a certain exquisite pleasure in the selection of delicate and becoming fabrics. There was a thrill of novelty

in being able to spend an hour, curled up with a book after lunch, to listen to music one afternoon a week, to drive through the mistily gray park, to walk up the thronged sparkling avenue, pausing before its Aladdin cave windows, simple enough pleasures, and taken quite as a matter of course by thousands of other women who had no work-filled life behind them to use as contrast. She plunged into her new life wholeheartedly. The first due gown was exciting. It was a velvet affair with furs and gratifyingly becoming. Her shining blonde head rose above the soft background of velvet and fur

with an effect to distract the least observing. Like it? She had asked Buck, turning slowly, frankly sure of herself. You're wonderful in it, said T.A. Buck. Say, Emma, where's that blue thing you use? to wear, the one with the white cuffs and collar, and the little blue hat with the whatcha-mock columns on it. T.A. Buck, you're—you're—well, you're a man, that's what you are.

That blue thing was worn threadbare in the office, and I gave it to the laundress's niece weeks ago. Small wonder her cheeks took on a deeper pink. Oh, said Buck, unruffled. Too bad. There was something about that dress. I don't know. At the first sitting of the second gown, Emma revolted openly. On the floor at Emma's feet, there was knotted into a contortionistic attitude, a small, wiry, impolite person named Smalley. Miss Smalley was an artist in draping and knew it. She was the least fashionable person in all that smart dress-making establishment.

She refused to notice the corset coiffure and charmuse edict that governed all other employees in the shop in her shabby little dress her steel-rimmed spectacles her black satine apron smally might have passed for a bird center home dressmaker yet given a yard or two or three of satin and a saucer of pins Smalley could make the dumpiest of debutants look like a fragile flower. At a critical moment, Emma stirred. Handicapped as she was by a mouthful of nineteen pins and her bon-knot attitude, Smalley still could voice at protest. Don't move, she commanded thickly. Wait a minute, Emma said, and moved again more disastrously than before.

Don't you think it's too—too young? She eyed herself in the mirror anxiously, then looked down at Miss Smalley's nutcracker face that was peering up at her, its lips pursed grotesquely over the pins. "'Of course it is,' mumbled Miss Smalley. "'Everybody's clothes, they're too young for them nowadays. The only difference between the dresses we make for girls of sixteen

and the dresses we make for their grandmothers of sixty is that the sixty-year owens one I'm sure and lower, and they run more to Rosebud treading. Emma surveyed the acid Miss Smalley, with a look that was half amused, half vexed, wholly determined. I shan't wear it. Heaven knows I'm not sixty, but I'm not sixteen either. I don't want to be. Miss Smalley, doubling again to her task, flung upward a grudging compliment.

Well, anyway, you got the hair in the car and a car. and a figure for it. Goodness knows you look young enough. That's because I have worked hard all my life, retorted Emma, almost viciously. Another month of this leisure, and I'll be as wrinkled as the rest of them. Smalley's magic fingers paused in their manipulation of a soft fold of satin. Worked, earn our liver, use your wits and brains every day against the wits and brains of other folks. Every day.

into the eyes of Miss Smalley, the artist in draping, there crept the shrewd twinkle of Miss Smalley, the successful woman in business. She had been sitting back on her knees, surveying her handiwork through narrowed lids. Now she turned her gaze on Emma, who was smiling down at her. Then, for goodness sakes, don't stop. I found out that work is a kind of self-arler. If you're used to it, the minute you stop you begin to get rusty, and your hinges creak, then you clog up, and the next thing you know you break down, work that you like to do is a

blessing. It keeps you young. When my mother was my age, she was crippled with rheumatism, and all gnarled up in quavery, and all she had to look forward to was death. Now me, every time the styles and skirts change, I get a new hold on life, and on a day when I can make a short, fat woman, look like a tall, thin woman, just by sitting here on my knees with a handful of pins and giving her the line she needs, I go home feeling like I'd just been born.

I know that feeling, said Emma, in her eyes a sparkle that had long been absent. I've had it when I've landed a thousand-dollar feather loom order from a man who has assured me that he isn't interested in our line. At dinner that evening, Emma's gown was so obviously not of the new crop that even her husband's in-expert eye noted it. that's not one of the new ones is it this and you a manufacturer of skirts what's the matter with the supply of new dresses isn't there enough to go around enough i've never had so many new gowns in my life the trouble is that i shan't feel it home in them until i've had em all dry cleaned at least once during the second month there came a sudden sharp change in skirt modes for four years women had been mincing along in garments

so absurdly narrow that each step was a thing to be considered each curbing or carstep demanding careful negotiation now fashion in her freakiest mood commanded a bewildering width of skirt that was just one removed from the flaring hoops of civil war days emma knew with this meant for the featherloon workrooms and selling staff new designs new models a shift in prices a boom for petticoats for four years a garment despised. A hundred questions were on the tip of Emma's tongue. A hundred suggestions flashed into her keen mind. There occurred to her a wonderful design for a new model, which should be full and flaring, without being bulky and uncomfortable, as were the wide petticoats of the old days. But a bargain was a bargain.

Still Emma Buck was as human as Emma McChesney had been. She could not resist a timid—tie—t. Are you—that is, I was just wondering, you're making them wide, I suppose, for the spring trade? A queer look flashed into T.A. Buc's eyes. A relieved look that was as quickly replaced by an expression both baffled and anxious. Why, uh—yes. Oh, yes. We're making them up wide, but—' But what? Emma leaned forward, tense. Oh, nothing, nothing. During the second month there came calling on Emma, those solid.

and heavy New Yorkers, with whom the Buck family had been on friendly terms for many years. They came at the correct hour, in their correct motor or conservative brogums, wearing their quietly correct clothes, and Emma gave them tea, and they talked on every subject from suffrage to salad dressings, and from war to weather, but never once was mentioned made of business. And Emma Chesney's life had been interwoven with business, for more than fifteen years. There were dinners, long, heavy, correct dinners. Emma, very well-dressed, bright-eyed, alert, intelligent, vital,

became very popular at these affairs, and her husband, very proud of her popularity. And if anyone as thoroughly alive as Mrs. T. A. Buck could have been bored to extinction by anything, then those dinners would have accomplished the deadly work. T.A., she said one evening, after a particularly large affair of this sort, T.A., have you ever noticed anything about me that is different from other women? Have I? Well, I should say, I—oh, I don't mean what you mean, dear. Thanks, just the same. I mean those women tonight, they all seem to go in for something, votes, or charity, or dancing, or social service, or something, even the girls. And they

They all sounded so amateurish, so untrained, so unprepared, yet they seem to be dreadfully in earnest. "'This is the difference,' said T. A. Buck. "'You've rubbed up against life, and you know. They've always been sheltered, but now they want to know. Well, naturally, they're going to bungle and bump their heads a good many times before they really find out.' "'Anyway,' retorted Emma, "'they want to know.

That's something. It's better to have bumped your head, even though you never see what's on the other side of the wall, than never to have tried to climb it. It was in the third week of the third month that Emma encountered Hortense. Hortense, before her marriage to Henry the shipping clerk, had been a very pretty, very pert, very devoted little stenographer in the office of the T.A. Buck Featherloom pedicode company. She had married just a month after her employers, and,

Emma, from the fullness of her own brimming cup of happiness, had made Hortense happy with a gift of linens and lingerie and lace of a fineness that Hortense's beauty-loving, feminine heart could never have hoped for. They met in the busy aisle of a downtown department store and shook hands, as do those who have a common bond. Hortens as pretty as ever, and as Pert, spoke first. I wouldn't have known you, Mrs. Buck, no. Why not?

You look, no one would think you'd ever worked in your life. I was down at the office the other day for a minute, the first time since I was married. They told me you weren't there anymore. No, I haven't been down since my marriage either. I'm like you, an elegant lady of leisure. Hortense's bright blue eyes dwelt searchingly on the face of her former employer. The bunch in the office said they missed you something awful. Then in haste, oh, I don't miss you.

mean that Mr. Buck doesn't make things go all right. They're awfully fond of him. But I don't know. Miss Kelly said she never has got over waiting for the sound of your step down the hall at nine, sort of light and quick and sharp and busy, as if you couldn't wait till you waited into the day's work. Do you know what I mean? I know what you mean, said Emma. There was a little pause. The two women, so far apart yet so near, so different yet so alike, gazed far down into each other's soul. Miss it, don't you? said Hortense. Yes, don't you? Do I? Say!

She turned and indicated the women searching up and down the store aisles, and her glance and gesture were replete with contempt. Say, look at them. Wondering around here aimless as a lot of chickens in a barnyard, Half of them are here because they haven't got anything else to do. Think of it. I've watched them lots of times. They go pawing over silks and laces and trimmings just for the pleasure of feeling them.

They stand in front of a glass case with a figure in it, all dressed up in satin and furs and jewels, and you'd think they were worshipping an idol like they used to in the olden days. They don't seem to have anything to do, nothing to occupy their head. "'Say, if I thought I was going to be like them in time, I—' "'Hartense, my dear child, you're—you're happy, aren't you? Henry—well, I should say we are. I'm crazy about Henry, and he thinks I'm perfect. Honestly, ain't they a scream? They think they're so big and manly and all, and they're just like kids, ain't it so? We're living in a four-room apartment in Harlem. We've got it fixed up too cozy for anything.

"'I'd like to come and see you,' said Emma. Hortense opened her eyes wide. "' Honestly, if you would, let's go now. I've got the car outside. Now, why, I love it!' They chattered like schoolgirls on the way uptown. These two who had found so much in common, the little apartment reached,

Hortense threw open the door with the confident gesture of the housekeeper who is not afraid to have her household taken by surprise, whose housekeeping is an index of character. Hartense had been a clean-cut little stenographer. Her correspondence had always been free from erasures, thumb-marks, errors. Her four-room flat was as spotless as her typewritten letters had been. The kitchen shone in its blue and white and nickel.

A canary chirped in the tiny dining-room. There were books and magazines on the sitting-room table. The bedroom was brave in its snowy spread, and the toilet silver that had been Henry's gift to her the Christmas they became engaged. Emma examined everything, exclaimed over everything, admired everything. Hartense glowed like a rose. Do you really like it? I like the green veller's in the sitting-room, don't you?

It's always so kind and cheerful. We're not all settled yet, I don't suppose we ever will be. Sundays Henry putters around, putting up shelves and fooling around with the can of paint, I always tell him he ought to have lived on a form where he'd have elbow-groom. "'No wonder you're so happy and busy,' Emma exclaimed, and patted the girl's fresh young cheek. Hortense was silent for a moment. I'm happy,' she said at last, "'but I ain't busy, and, well, if you're not busy, you can't be happy very long, can you?' "'No,' said Emma. "'Idleness, when you're not used to it, is misery.'

"'There, you said it. It's like running on halftime, when you're you're used to a day and night shift, something's lacking. It isn't that Henry isn't grand to me, because he is. Evenings, we're so happy that we just sit and grin at each other, and half the time we forget to go to a movie. After Henry leaves in the morning, I get to work. I suppose, in the old days, when women used to have to chop the kennel in and catch the water for washing in a rain-barrel

and keep up a fire in the kitchen stove and do all their own bread-baking in our all. It used to keep him hustling. But my goodness, four-room flat for two isn't any work. By eleven, I'm through. I've straightened everything, from the bed to the refrigerator. The marketing's done, and the dinner vegetables are sitting around in cold water. The mending for two is a joke. Henry says it's a wonder I don't sew double-breasted buttons on his undershirts. Emma was not smiling, but then neither was Hartens. She was talking lightly seeming. but her pretty face was quite serious. The big noise in my day is when Henry comes home at six.

That was all right and natural, I suppose, in those times when a quilting bee was a wild afternoon's work, and teaching school was the most advanced job a woman could hold down. Emma was gazing fascinated at the girl's sparkling face. Her own eyes were very bright, and her lips were parted. "'Tell me, Hortense,' she said now, What does Henry say to all this? Have you told him how you feel?

Well, I talked to him about it once or twice. I told him that I've got about 24 solid hours a week that I might be getting fifty cents an hour for. You know, I worked for a manuscript typewriting concern before I came over to Bucks, plays and stories and that kind of thing. They used to like my work because I never queered their speeches by leaving out punctuation or mixing up the characters. The manager there said I could have work any time I wanted it.

I've got my own typewriter. I got it second-hand when I first started in. Henry picks around on it sometimes evenings. I hardly ever touch it. It's getting rusty, and so am I. It isn't just the money you want, Hortense. Are you sure? Of course I'd like the money.

That extra coming in would mean books. I'm crazy about reading, and so is Henry, and theaters and lots of things we can't afford now. That isn't all. Henry don't want to be a shipping clerk all his life. He's crazy about mechanics and that kind of stuff. But the books that he needs costs a lot. Don't you suppose I'd be proud to feel that the extra money I'd earned

would lift him up where he could have a chance to be something? But Henry is dead set against it. He says he is the one that's going to earn the money around here. I try to tell him that I'm used to using my mind. He laughs and pinches my cheek and tells me to use it thinking about him. She stopped suddenly and regarded Emma with conscience-stricken eyes. You don't think I'm running down, Henry, do you? My goodness, I don't want you to think that I'd change back again for a million dollars,

because I wouldn't. She looked up at Emma, conscience-stricken. Emma came swiftly over and put one hand on the girl's shoulder. I don't think it not for a minute. I know that the world is full of Henry. and that the number of Hortense's is growing larger and larger. I don't know if the four-room flats are to blame, or whether it's just a natural development, but the Henry Hortense situation seems to be spreading to the nine room in three baths apartments, too.

Hartens nodded a knowing head. I kind of thought so from the way you were listening. The two standing there, gazing at each other almost shyly. suddenly began to laugh. The laugh was a safety valve. Then, quite as suddenly, both became serious. That seriousness had been the undercurrent throughout. I wonder, said Emma very gently,

if a small Henry someday won't provide you with an outlet for all that stored-up energy? Hortense looked up very bravely. Maybe. You—you must have been about my age when your boy was born. Did he make you—' feel different? The shade of sadness that always came at the mention of those unhappy years of her early marriage crept into Emma's face now. That was not the same, dear, she explained. I hadn't your sort of Henry. You see, my boy was my only excuse for living. You'll never know what that means.

And when things grew altogether impossible, I knew that I must earn a living for Jock and myself. I just did it. That's all I had to. Her tense thought that over for one deliberate moment. Her brows were drawn in a frown. I'll tell you what I think, she announced at last, though I don't know that I can just exactly put it into words. I mean this. Some people are just bound to give, to build up things,

to, well, to manufacture, because they can't help it. It's in them. and it's got to come out. Dynamo's. That's what Henry's technical books would call them. You're one. A great big one. I'm one, just a little tiny one, but it's sparking away there all the time, and it might as well be put to some use, mightn't it? Emma bent down and kissed the troubled forehead,

and then, very tenderly, the pretty puckered lips. Little heart tense, she said, you're asking a great big question. I can answer it for myself, but I can't answer it for you. It's too dangerous. I wouldn't if I could. Emma, waiting in the hall for the lift, looked back at the slim little figure in the doorway. There was a droop to the shoulders. Emma's heart smote her.

Don't bother your head about all this little girl. She called back to her. Just forget to be ambitious and remember to be happy. That's much the better way. Hartence, from the doorway, grinned a rather wicked little grin. "'When are you going back to the office, Mrs. Buck?' she asked quietly enough. "'What makes you think I'm going back at all?' demanded Emma, stepping into the shaky little elevator. "'I don't think it,' retorted Hortense, once more the pert.

"'I know it.' Emma knew it, too. She had known it from the moment that she shook hands in her compact. There was still one week remaining of these stipulated three months. It seemed to Emma that that one week was longer than the combined eleven, but she went through it with colors flying. Whatever Emma McChesney Buck did, she did well. But then T.A. Buck had done his part well, too,

so well that on the final day, Emma felt a sinking in her heart. He seemed so satisfied with the fairs as they were. He was apparently so content to drop all thought of business when he left the office for his home. Emma had planned a very special little dinner that evening. She wore a very special gown, too, one of the new ones. T.A. noticed it at once, and the dinner as well being that kind of husband. Still, Annie the cook complained later to the parlor maid about the thanklessness of cooking dinners for folks who didn't eat more than a mouthful anyway.

dinner over well emma said t a buck light your cigar t a said emma you'll need it t a lighted it with admirable leisureliness sent out a great puff of fragrant smoke and surveyed his wife through half-closed lids beneath his air of ease there was a tension well emma he said again gently emma looked at him a moment appreciatively she had too much pawed in balance and control herself not to recognize and admire those qualities in others. T.A., if I had been what they call a homebody, we wouldn't be married today, would we? No. You knew plenty of home women that you could have married, didn't you? I didn't ask them, Emma, but you know what I mean. Now listen, T.A. I've loafed for three months. I've lulled and lazy and languished, and I've never been so tired in my life, not even when we were taking January inventory. Another month of this, and I'd be an old, old woman. I understand now what it is that brings that hard, tired, stony look into the faces of the idle women. They have to work so hard

to try to keep happy. I suppose if I had been a homebody all my life, I might be hardened. to this kind of thing, but it's too late now, and I'm thankful for it. Those women who want to shop and dress and drive and play are welcome to my share of it. If I am to be punished in the next world for my wickedness in this, I know what form my torture will take. I shall have to go from shop to shop with a piece of lace in my hand, matching a sample of insertion. Fifteen years of being in the Thick of it, spoil one for tatting and tea. The world is full of homebodies, I suppose, and they're happy. I suppose I might have been one, too, if I hadn't been obliged to get out and hustle, but it's too late to learn now. Besides, I don't want to. If I do try, I'll be destroying the

very thing that attracted you to me in the first place. Remember what you said about the Fifth Avenue, girl? But Emma, interrupted Buck very quietly. I don't want you to try. Emma, with a rush of words at her very lips, paused. I'd him for a doubtful moment, asked a faltering question. But it was your plan. You said you wanted me to be here when you came home, and when you left, didn't you? Do you mean you? I mean that I've missed my business partner every minute for three months. All the time we've been going to those fool dinners and all that kind of thing. I've been bursting to talk skirts to you. I say Emma, Adler's designed a new model, a full one, of course, but there's something wrong with it. I can't put my finger on the

flaw, but Emma came swiftly over to his chair. Make a sketch of it, can't you? She said. From his pocket Buck drew a pencil, an envelope, and fell to sketching rapidly, squinting down through his cigar smoke as he worked. It's like this. He began, absorbed and happy. You see, where the fullness begins at the knee. Yes, prompted Emma breathlessly. Two hours later they were still bent over the much marked bit of paper.

But their interest in it was not that of those who would solve a perplexing problem. It was the lingering, satisfied contemplation. of a task accomplished. Emma straightened, leaned back, sighed, a victorious happy sigh. And to think, she said marveling, to think that I once envied the women who had nothing to do but the things I've done in the last three months. Buck had risen, stretched luxuriously, yawned. Now he came over to his wife and took her head in his two hands, cozzily,

and stood a moment looking into her shining up. eyes. Emma, I may have mentioned this once or twice before, but perhaps you'll still be interested to know that I think you're a wonder. A wonder! You're the—oh, well, we won't quarrel about that, smiled Emma brazenly. But I wonder if Adler will agree with us when he sees what we've done to his newest skirt design. Suddenly a new thought seemed to strike her. She was off down the hall. Buck, following in a leisurely manner, hands and pockets, stood in the bedroom door and watched her plunge into the innermost depths of her clothes closet. What's the idea, Emma? Looking for something?

Came back his wife's muffled tones. A long wait. Can I help? I've got it, cried Emma. And emerged, triumphant, flushed, smiling, holding a garment at arm's length aloft. What? Emma shook it smartly. turned it this way and that, and held it under her chin by the sleeves.

"'Why, girl!' exclaimed Buck Olegren. "'It's the—the blue serge,' Emma finished for him, with the white collars and cuffs. And what's more, young man, it's the little blue hat with the watch of my columns on it, and praise be, I'm wearing both of them downtown tomorrow morning. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 4 of Emma McChesney and Company by Edna Ferber. This Libra-Vox recording is in the public domain, recording by Phil Schenever.

Chapter 5. Hoops, my dear! Emma McChesney Buck always vigorously disclaimed any knowledge of that dreamy-eyed damsel known as inspiration. T.A. Buck, her husband-partner, accused her of being on intimate terms with the lady. So did the adoring office staff of the T.A. Buck Featherloom Pedicote Company. Out in the workshop itself, the designers and cutters, those jealous artists of the pencil, shears, and yardstick, looked on in awed admiration on those rare occasions when the feminine

member of the business took the scissors in her firm white hands and slashed boldly into a shimmering length of petticoat silk. When she put down the great shears, there lay on the table the detached parts of that which the appreciative and experienced eyes of the craftsman knew to be a new and original variation of that elastic garment known as the underskirt. For weeks preceding one of these cutting exhibitions, Emma was likely to be not quite her usual brisk self. A mystic glow replaced the alert brightness of her eye. Her wide-awake manner gave way to one of almost sluggish inactivity. The outer office, noting these things, would lift its eyebrows significantly.

Another hunch, it would whisper. The last time she beat the rest of the trade by six weeks with that elastic top gusset. Inspiration working, Emma? T.A. Buck would ask, noting the symptoms. It isn't inspiration, T.A. nothing of the kind. It's just an attack of imagination, complicated by close instinct. That's all that ails Poiret, Buck would retort. Early in the autumn, when women were still walking with an absurd sidewise gate, like a duck or a filly that is too tightly hobbled,

the junior partner of the firm began to show unmistakable signs of business aberration. Ape light seemed to have fallen upon her bright little office, usually humming with activity, The machinery of her day, ordinarily as noiseless and well-ordered as a thing on ball-bearings, now rasped, creaked, jerked, stood still, jolted on again. A bustling clerk or stenographer, entering with paper or memorandum, would find her bent over her desk, pencil and hand, absorbed in a rough drawing that seemed to bear no relation to the skirt of the day. The margin of her morning paper was filled with queer little scrawls by the time she reached the office.

She drew weird lines with her fork on the tablecloth at lunch. These hieroglyphics she covered with a quick hand, like a bashful schoolgirl, when anyone peeped. Tell a fellow what it's going to be, can't you? pleaded Buck. I got one glimpse yesterday when you didn't know I was looking over your shoulder. it seemed a pass between an overgrown seplin and an apple dumpling, so I know it can't be a skirt. Come on, Emma, tell your old man. Not yet, Emma would reply, dreamily.

Buck would strike an attitude intended to intimidate. If you have no sense of what is due me as your husband, then I demand, as senior partner of this firm, to know what it is that is taking your time, which rightfully belongs to this business. Go away, T.A. and stop pestering me. What do you think I'm designing, adorily? Buck, returning to his own office, threw a last retard over his shoulder,

a rather sobering one this time. Whatever it is, it had better be good, with business what it is and skirts what they are. Emma lifted her head to reply to that. It isn't what they are that interests me. It's what they're going to be. Buck paused in the doorway. Going to be. Anybody can see that.

Underneath that full, fool, flaring overdrape, the real skirt is as tight as ever. I don't think the spring models will show an inch in real difference. I tell you, Emma, it's serious. Emma, apparently absorbed in her work, did not reply to this. But a vague something about the back of her head,

told T.A. Buck, that she was laughing at him. The knowledge only gave him new confidence in this resourceful, many-sided, lovable, level-headed partner-wife of his. Two weeks went by, four, six, eight. Emma began to look a little thin. Her bright color was there only when she was overtired or excited.

The workrooms began to talk of new designs for spring, though it was scarcely midwinter. the head designer came forward timidly with a skirt that measured a yard around the bottom emma looked at it tried to keep her lower lip prisoner between her teeth failed and began to laugh helplessly almost hysterically amazement in the faces of buck and carrots the designer became consternation then in the designer resentment caritz dark undersized with the eyes of an oriental and the lean sensitive fingers of one who creates shivered a little like a plant that is swept by an icy blast buck came over and laid one hand on his wife's shaking shoulder emma you're overtired this this thing you've been slaving over has been too much for you with one hand emma reached up and patted the fingers that rested protectively on her shoulder with the other she wiped your eyes then she wiped her eyes then all contrition, grasped the slender brown hand of the offended Coritz. Benny, please forgive me.

I didn't mean to laugh. I wasn't laughing at your new skirt. You think it's too wide, maybe, huh? Benny, Corrit said, and held it up doubtfully. Too wide? For a moment Emma seemed threatened with another attack of that inexplicable laughter. She choked it back resolutely. No, Benny, not too wide.

I'll tell you tomorrow why I laughed, then perhaps you'll laugh with me. Benny, draping his despised skirt model over one arm, had the courage to smile even now, though grimly. I laugh, sure, he said showing his white teeth now. But the laugh will be, I bet you on me, like it was when you design that knickerbucker before the trade knew such a thing could be. Impulsively, Emma grasped his hand and showed. it as though she found a certain needed encouragement in the loyalty of this sallow little

Russian. Benny, you're a true artist, because you're big enough to praise the work of a fellow craftsman when you recognize its value. Ancoritz, the dull red showing under the olive of his cheeks, went back to his cutting table happy. Buck bent forward eagerly. You're going to tell me now, Emma, it's finished? Tonight, at home.

I want to be the first to try. on, I'll play model. A private exhibition just for you. It's not only finished, it is patented. Patented? But why? What is it anyway? A new fastener? I thought it was a skirt. Wait until you see it. You'll think that I should have had a copyrighted as well, not to say passed by the National Board of Censors. Do you mean to say that I'm to be the entire audience at the premiere of this new model. You are to be the audience, critic, orchestra, boxholder, patron, and Diamond Jim Brady. Now run along into your own office, won't you, dear?

I want to get out these letters, and she pressed the button that summoned a stenographer. T. A. Buck resigned, admiring, and anticipatory, wit. Annie the Cook was justified that evening in her bitter complete. her excellent dinner received scant enough attention from these two they hurried through it like eager bright-eyed school-children who have been promised a treat two scarlet spots glowed in emma's cheeks buck's eyes through the haze of his after-dinner cigar were luminous now no not yet i want you to smoke your cigar and digest your dinner and read your paper i want you to twiddle your your thumbs a little and look at your watch. First night curtains are always late and rising, aren't they? Well, she turned on the full glare of the chandelier, turned it off, went about flicking on the soft shaded wall lights and the lamps. Turn your chair so that your back will

be toward the door. He turned it obediently. Emma vanished. From the direction of her bedroom, there presently came the sounds of dresser drawers, hurriedly opened and shut with a bang, of a slipper dropped on the hardwood floor a tune homed in an absent-minded absorption under the breath and excited little laugh nervously stifled buck in his role of audience began to clap impatiently and to stamp with his feet on the floor no gallery emma called in from the hall remember the temperamental family on the floor below a silence then i'm coming shut your eyes and prepare to be jarred by the buck balloon petticoat there was a rustling of silks a little rush to the center of the big room a breathless pause a sharp snap of finger and thumb buck opened his eyes he opened his eyes he opened his eyes Then he closed them and opened them again, quickly as we do sometimes when we are unwilling to believe that which we see. What he beheld was this.

A very pretty, very flushed, very bright-eyed woman, her blonde hair dressed quaintly after the fashion of the early sixties, her arms and shoulders bare, a pink slip with shoulder straps in lieu of a bodice, and he passed a bewildered hand over his eyes. a skirt that billowed and flared and flounced and spread in a great graceful circle a skirt strangely light for all its fullness a skirt like and yet somehow unlike those garments seen in ancient copies of goody's lady-book that can't be-you don't mean what-what is it stammered buck dismayed emmaid her arms curved above her head like a ballet-dancer's pirouetted, curtsied very low, so that the skirts spread all about her on the floor, like the petals of a flower. "'Hoop's, my dear?'

"'Hoops,' echoed Buck, in a weak protest. "'Hoop's, my dear.' Emma stroked one silken fold with approving fingers. Our new leader for a spring. But, Emma, you're joking!" She stared, suddenly serious. You mean you don't like it. Like it? For a fancy dress costume, yes. But as a petticoat for everyday wear, to be made up by us for

our customers? But of course you're playing a trick on me." He laughed a little weekly and came toward her. You can't catch me that way, old girl. It's darned becoming, Emma. I'll say that. He bent down, smiling. I'll allow you to kiss me, and then try me with the real surprise, will you? Her coquetry vanished. Her smile fled with it. Her pretty pose was abandoned. Mrs. T.A. Buck wife gave way to Emma McChesney Buck, businesswoman. She stiffened a little as though bracing herself for a verbal encounter.

You'll get used to it. I expected you to be jolted at the first shock of it. I was myself when the idea came to me. Buck passed a frenzied for a finger under his collar. as though it had suddenly grown too tight for him. Used to it. I don't want to get used to it. It's preposterous.

You can't be serious? No woman would wear a garment like that. For five years, skirts have been tighter and tighter. Until this summer they became tightest, interrupted Emma. They could go no farther. I knew that meant about face. I knew it meant not a slightly wider skirt, but a wildly wider skirt. a skirt as buffont as the other had been scant i was sure it wouldn't be a gradual process at all but a mushroom growth hobbles today hoops to-morrow

study the history of women's clothes and you'll find that has always been true look here emma began buck desperately you're wrong all wrong here let me throw this scarf over your shoulders now we'll sit down and talk this thing over sensibly i'll agree to the scarf she drew a soft silk-infringed shawl about her and immediately one thought of a certain vivid brilliant portrait of a hoop-skirted dancer but don't ask me to sit down i'm I'd rebound like a toy balloon. I've got to convince you of this thing. I'll have to do it standing. Buck sank into his chair and dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief. You'll never convince me, sitting or standing, Emma. I know I fought the Knickerbocker when you originated it,

and I know that it turned out to be a magnificent success. But this is different. The knicker was practical. This thing's absurd. It's impossible. This is an age of activity. In Civil War days, women minced daintily along when they walked at all. They stitched on samplers by way of diversion.

What has all that to do with it? inquired Emma sweetly. Everything. Use a little logic. Logic. In a discussion about women's dress? T.A. I'm surprised. But, Emma, be reasonable, good Lord. You're usually clear-sighted enough. Our mode of living has changed in the land.

last 50 years? Our methods of transit. Our pastimes, customs, everything. Imagine a woman trying to climb a Fifth Avenue bus in one of those things. Fancy her in a hot set of tennis. Women use streetcars, automobiles, airships. Can you see a subway train full of hoop-skirted clerks, stenographers, and models? Streetcar steps aren't built for it.

Office building elevators can't stand for it. Six-room apartments won't accommodate them. They're fantastic, wild, improbable. You're wrong, Emma. All wrong. She had listened patiently enough, never once attempting to interrupt. But on her lips was the maddening half-smile of one whose rebuttal is ready. Now she perched for a moment at the extreme edge of the arm of a chair.

Her skirt subsided decorously. Buck noticed that with surprise, even if she perched. in the midst of his heated protest. T.A., you've probably forgotten, but those are the very arguments used when the hobble was introduced. Pre-posterous people said, impossible. Women couldn't walk in them. Women couldn't sit down in them.

Women couldn't run, play tennis, skate in them. The car steps were too high for them. Well, what happened? Women had to walk in them, and a new gate became the fashion. Women took lessons in how to sit down in them. They slashed them for tennis and skating, and streetcar companies all over the country lowered the car steps to accommodate them.

What's true for the hobble holds good for the hoop. Women will cease to single foot and learn to undulate when they walk. They'll widen the car platforms. They'll sit on top the Fifth Avenue buses, and you'll never give them a second thought. The things don't stay where they belong. I've seen him misbehave in musical comedies, argued Buck miserably. That's where my patent comes in.

The old hoop was cumbersome, unwieldy, clumsy. The new skirt, by my patent feather-boning process, is made light, graceful, easily managed. T.A., I predict that by midsummer, a tight skirt will be as rare a sight as a full one was a year ago. Nonsense! We're not quarreling, are we? "'Quarling? I rather think not. A man can have his own opinion, can't he?' It appeared, however, that he could not, for when they had thrashed it out inch by inch, as my two partners whose only bond was business, it was Emma who won.

Remember, I'm not convinced,' Buck warned her. "'I'm only beaten by superior force. But I do believe in your woman's intuition I'll say that. It has never gone wrong. I'm banking on it. It's woman's intuition when we win, Emma observed thoughtfully. When we lose, it's a foolish, feminine notion. There were to be no halfway measures.

The skirt was to be the feature of the spring line. Cutters and designers were won with Buck and thinking it a freak garment. Emma reminded them that the same thing had been said of the hobble on its appearance. In February, Billy Spaulding, veteran skirt salesman, led a flying wedge of six on a test trip that included the Middle West and the coast. Their sample trunks had to be rebuilt to accommodate the new model. Spalding, shirt sleeve, whistling dolorously, eyed each garment with a look of bristling antagonism.

Spalding sold skirts on commission. Emma, surveying his labors, lifted a quizzical eyebrow. If you're going to sell that skirt as enthusiastically as you're, you pack it, you'd better stay here in New York and save the house traveling expenses. Spalding ceased to whistle. He held up a billowy sample and gazed at it. Honestly, Mrs. Buck, you know, I'd try to sell pretzels in London if you ask me to. But do you really think any woman alive would be caught wearing a garment like this in these days? Not only do I think it, Billy, I'm certain of it. This new petticoat makes me the Lincoln of

the skirt trade. I'm literally freeing my sisters from the shackles that have bound their ankles for five years. Spalding, unimpressed, folded another skirt. Uh, maybe, but what's that line about slaves hugging their chains? The day following, Spalding and his flying squad scattered to spread the light among the skirt trade, and things went wrong from the start. The first week showed an ominous lack of those cheering epistles beginning, enclosed, please find, etc. The second was worse. The third was equally bad.

The fourth was final. The second week in March, Spalding returned from a territory which had always been known as firmly wedded to the T.A. Buck feather-loon petticoat. The Middle West would have none of him. They held a post-mortem in Emma's bright little office, and that lady herself seemed to be strangely sunny and undaunted, considering the completeness of her defeat. She sat at her desk now, very interested, very bright-eyed, very calm. Buck in a chair at the side of her desk was interested, too, but not so calm.

Spalding, who was accustomed to talk while standing, leaned against the desk, feet crossed, brows furrowed. As he talked, he emphasized his remarks by his. jabbing the air with his pencil. Well, said Emma quietly, it didn't go. It didn't even start, corrected Spalding. But why, demanded Buck, why? Spalding leaned forward a little eagerly. When I started out with that little garment, I thought it was a joke.

Before I'd been out with it a week, I began to like it. In ten days I was crazy about it, and I believed in it from the waistband to the hymn. On the level, Mrs. Buck, I think it's a wonder. Now can you explain that? Yes, said Emma. You didn't like it at first, because it was a shock to you. It outraged all your ideas of what a skirt ought to be. Then you grew accustomed to it. Then you began to see its good points. Why couldn't you make the trade get your viewpoint? This is why. Out in Manistee and Ashkosh and Tara Hart, the girls have just really learned the trick of walking in tight skirts. It's as impossible to convince a Middle West buyer that the exaggerated full skirt is going

to be worn next summer, as it would be to prove to him that men are going to wear sunbonnets. They thought I was trying to sell a masquerade costumes. I may believe in it, and you may believe in it, and T.A. But the girls from Joplin, well, they're from Joplin, and they're waiting to hear from headquarters. T.A. Buck crossed one leg over the other and sat up with a little sigh. Well, that settles it, doesn't it? he said. It does not, replied Emma, McChesney Buck crisply. If they want to hear from headquarters, they won't have long to wait.

Now, Emma, don't try to push this thing if it—T.A., please don't look so forgiving. I'd much rather have you reproach me. It's you I'm thinking of, not the skirt, but I want you to think of the skirt, too. We've gone into this thing, and it has cost us thousands. Don't think I'm going to sit quietly by and watch those thousands trickle out of my hands, we've played our first card. It didn't take a trick. Here's another. Buck and Spalding were leaning forward, interested, attentive. There was that in Emma's vivid, glowing face, which did not mean defeat. March 15th at Madison Square Garden, there is to be held the first annual exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of American Styles for American Women. For 100 years,

we've taken our fashions as Paris dictated, regardless of whether they outraged our sense of humor or decency or of fitness. This year, the American designer is going to have a chance. Am I an American designer, T.A.? Billy? Yes, in chorus. Then I shall exhibit that skirt on a live model at the first annual American fashion show next month.

Every skirt buyer in the country will be there. If it takes hold there, it's made. and so are we. March came, and with it an army of men and women buyers, dependent for the first time in their business careers on the ingenuity of the American brain. The keen-eyed legions that had advanced on Europe early, armed with letters of credit, the vast horde that returned each spring and autumn laden with their spoils. Hats, gowns, laces, linens, silks, embroideries, were obliged to content themselves with what was. was to be found in their own camp.

Clever manager that she was, Emma took as much pains with her model as with the skirt itself. She chose a girl whose demure prettiness and quiet charm would enhance the possibilities of the skirt's practicability in the eye of the shrewd buyer. Gertrude, the model, developed a real interest in the success of the petticoat. Emma knew enough about the psychology of crowds

to realize how this increased her chances for success. The much-heralded fashion show was to open at one o'clock on the afternoon of March 50. At ten o'clock that morning they breezed in from Chicago, a tall, slim, alert young man, who made straight for the offices of the T.A. Buck Featherloom pedicode company, walked into the junior partner's private office, and took that astonished lady in his two strong arms. Jack McChestney, gasped his rumpled mother, emerging from the hug. I've been hungry for the sight of you.

She was submerged in a second hug. Come here to the window where I can get a real look at you. Why didn't you wire me? What are you doing away from your own job? How's business? And why come today of all days when I can't make a fuss over you? Jock McCessney, bright-eyed, clear-skinned, steady of hand, stood up well under the satisfied scrutiny of his adoring mother.

He smiled down at her. Wanted to surprise you. Here for three reasons. The Abbott Grape Juice advertising contract, you and Grace. And why can't you make a fuss over me I'd like to know? Emma told him. His keen, quick mind required little in the way of explanation. But why didn't you let me in on it sooner?

Because, son, nothing explains harder than embryo success. I always prefer to wait until it's grown up and let it do its own explaining. But the thing ought to have national advertising. Jock insisted, with the advertising expert's lightning grasp of its possibilities, what that skirt needs is publicity. Why didn't you let me handle? Yes, I know, dear, but you haven't seen the skirt. It won't do to ram it down their throats.

I want to ease it to them first. I want them to get used to it. It failed utterly on the road because it jarred their notion of what a petticoat ought to be. That's due to five years of sheath skirts. But suppose, just for the sake of argument, that it doesn't strike them right this afternoon. Then it's gone, that's all. Six months from now every skirt factory in the country will be manufacturing a similar garment. People will be ready for it then.

I've just tried to cut in ahead of the rest. Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to do it. Jock hugged her again at that, to the edification of the office windows across the way. Gad, you're a whiz, mother. Now listen. I phoned Grace when I got in. She's going to meet me here at one. I'll chase over to the office now on this grape-juice thing and come back here in time for lunch.

Is T.A.N.? I'll look in on him a minute. We'll all lunch together, and then, can't do it, son. The show opens at one. Gertrude, my model, comes on at three. She's going to have the stage to herself for ten minutes, during which she'll make four changes of costume to demonstrate the usefulness of the skirt for every sort of gown from chiffon to velvet. Come back here at one if you like.

If I'm not here, come over to the show. But lunch, I'd choke. At 12.30, they're scampered into Emma's office, a very white-faced, round-eyed little stock girl. Emma, deep in a last-minute discussion with Buck, had a premonition of trouble before the girl gasped out her message. Oh, Mrs. Buck, Gertie's office. "'Awful sick!' "'Sick!' echoed Emma and Buck in duet. "'Then, Emma, but she can't be. It's impossible.

She was all right a half hour ago. She was hurrying down the hall as she spoke. Where is she?' They got her on one of the tables in the workroom. She's moaning awful. Gertrude's appendix, with that innate sense of the dramatic, so often found in temperamental appendices, had indeed chosen this moment to call attention to itself.

Gertie, the demurely pretty and quietly charming, was rolled in a very tied ball on the workroom cutting table. At one o'clock she was on her way home in a cab under the care of a doctor, Miss Kelly, the bookkeeper, and Jock, who, coming in gaily at one, had been pressed into service, bewildered but willing. Three rather tragic figures stared at one another in the junior partner's office. They were Emma, Buck, and Grace Gult, Jock's wife to be. Grace Galt, slim, lovely, girlish, was known at 24 as one of the most expert copywriters in the advertising world. In her clear-headed, capable manner, she tried to suggest a way out of the difficulty now. But surely the world's full of girls, she said. It's late I know, but any theatrical agency will send a girl over.

That's just what I try to avoid. Emma replied. I wanted to show this skirt on a sweet, pretty, refined sort of girl who looks and acts like a lady. One of those blonde show girls would kill it. Gloom settled down again over the three. Emma broke the silence with a rueful little laugh. I think, she said. That perhaps you're right, T.A., and this is the Lord's way of showing me that the world is not quite ready for this skirt.

You're not beaten yet, Emma. Buck assured her vigorously. How about this new girl? What's her name? Myrtle. She's one of those thin, limp ones, didn't she? Try her. I will, said Emma, you're right.

I'm not beaten yet. I've had to fight for everything worthwhile in my life. I'm superstitious about it now. When things come easy, I'm afraid of them. Then to the stock girl. Annie, tell Myrtle I want to see her. Silence fell again upon the three. Mertle, very limp, very thin, very languid,

indeed roused them at her entrance. The hopeful look in Emma's eyes faded as she beheld her. Myrtle was so obviously limp, so hopelessly new. And he says you want me to take Gertie's place, drawled Mertl, striking a magazine cover attitude. I don't know that you're just the type, but perhaps if you're willing. Of course, I didn't come here as a model, said Mertl, and sagged on the other hip. but as a special favor to you, I'm willing to try it, at special models' rates.

Emma ran a somewhat frenzied hand through her hair. Then, as a special favor to me, will you begin by trying to stand up straight, please, that debutante slouch would kill a queen's coronation costume? Myrtle straightened, slumped again. I can't help it if I'm willowy, listlessly. Your hair. Myrtle's hand went vaguely to her hand. head. I can't have you wear it that way. Why, this is the French roll, protested Mertl, offended.

Then do it a German bun, snapped Emma. Anyway, but that. Will you walk, please? Walk? Dully. Yes, walk. I want to see how you—Murtle walked across the room. A groan came from Emma. I thought so. She took a long breath. Mertl, listen. That Australian crawl was necessary when our skirts were so narrow, we had to negotiate a curbing before we could take it. But the skirt you're going to demonstrate is wide. Like that. You're practically a free woman in it. Step out, stride, swing, walk.

Mertl tried it, stumbled, sulked. Emma, half smiling, half woeful, patted the girl's shoulder. Oh, I see, you're wearing a tight one. Well, run in and get into the skirt. Miss Lowe will help you. Then come back here and quickly please. The three looked at each other in silence. It was a silence brimming with eloquent meaning.

Each sought encouragement in the eyes of the other and failed to find it. Failing they broke into helpless laughter, it proved a safety valve. She may do, Emma, when she has her hair done differently, and if she'll only stand up, but Emma shook her head. T.A. something tells me you're going to have a wonderful chance to say, I told you so at three o'clock this afternoon. You know I wouldn't say it, Emma. Yes, I do know it, dear.

But what's the difference if the chance is there? Suspense settled down on the little office. Billy Spalding entered smiling. After five minutes of waiting, even his buoyant spirits sank. Don't you think if you were to go in and sort of help adjust things, suggested Buck vaguely? No, I don't want to prop her up. She'll have to stand alone when she gets there. She'll either do or not.

When she enters that door, I'll know. When Myrtle entered, wearing the fascinatingly fashioned new model, they all knew. Emma spoke decisively. That settles it. What's the matter, don't it look all right? demanded Myrtle. Take it off, Myrtle. Then to the others, as Myrtle, sulking, left the room.

I can stand to see that skirt die if necessary, but I won't help murder it. But Mrs. Buck, protested Spalding, almost tearfully. You've got to exhibit that skirt. You've got to. Emma shook a sorrowing head. That wouldn't be an exhibition, Billy. It would be an expose. Spalding clapped a desperate hand to his bald head. If only I had Juliet and Teng's shape I'd wear it to the show for you myself. That's all it needs now, retorted Emma grimly.

Whereupon, Grey Scult, spoke up in her clear, decisive. voice. Wait a minute, she said quietly. I'm going to wear that skirt at the fashion show. You? cried the three like a trained trio. Why not? demanded Grace called coolly. Then, no, don't tell me why not. I won't listen. But Emma, equally cool, would have none of it. It's impossible, dear. You're an angel to want to help me, but you must know it's quite out of the question. It's nothing of the kind. This skirt isn't merely a fad. It has a has a fortune in it. I'm businesswoman enough to know that.

You've got to let me do it. It isn't only for yourself. It's for TA, and for the future of the firm. Do you suppose I'd allow you to stand up before all those people? Why not? I don't know them.

They don't know me. I can make them get the idea in that skirt. And I'm going to do it. You don't object to me on the same grounds that you did to Myrtle, do you? You, burst from the admiring Spalding. Say you'd make a red flannel petticoat look like crepe de chenay and lace. There, said Grace triumphantly, that settles it. And she was off down the hall.

They stood a moment in stunned silence then. But Jock, protested Emma, following her. What will Jock say? Grace, Grace, dear, I can't let you do it. I can't. Just unhook this for me, will you? replied Grace Galt sweetly. At two o'clock, Jock McChesney returned from his errand of mercy, burst into the office to find mother, stepfather, and fiancé, all flown. Where, what? He demanded of the outer office. Fashion show, coerced the office staff.

Might have waited for me. Chok said to himself much injured, and hurled himself into a taxi. There was a crush of motors and carriages for a block on all sides of Madison Square garden. He had to wait for what seemed an interminable. time at the box office. Then he began the task of worming his way through the close-packed throng in the great auditorium. It was a crowd such as the great place had not seen since the palmy days of the horse show. It was a crowd that sparkled and shone in silks and feathers and furs and jewels.

Job if mother has half a chance at this gang, Jock told himself, if only she has grabbed someone who can really show that skirt. He was swept with the first. the crowd toward a high platform at the extreme end of the auditorium. All about that platform stood hundreds, close-packed, faces raised eagerly, the better to see the slight, graceful, girlish figure occupying the center of the stage, a figure strangely familiar to Jock's eyes in spite of its quaintly billowing ante-bellum garb. She was speaking. Jock, mouth agape, eyes protruding, ear-strainning,

heard as in a daze the sweet, clear, charmingly modulated voice. The feature of the skirt, ladies and gentlemen, is that it gives a fullness without weight, something which the skirt maker has never before been able to achieve. This is due to the patent feather-boning process invented by Mrs. T.A. Buck of the T.A. Buck Featherloom pedicode company, New York. Note, please, that it has all the advantages of our grandmother's hoop skirt, but none of its awkward features. It is graceful, she turned slowly, lightly.

It is bouffant. She twirled on her toes. It is practical, serviceable, elegant. It can be made up in any shade in any material. Silk, lace, crypt-chine, Charmuse, taffeta. The T.A. Buck, Featherloom, pedicode company, is prepared to fill orders for immediate, Well, I'll be darned, said Jock.

Mitchesney aloud. And again, heedless of the protesting, shh, that his neighbors turned upon him. Well, I'll be darned. A hand twitched his coat sleeve. He turned, still dazed. His mother, very pink-cheeked, very bright-eyed, pulled him through the throng.

As they reached the edge of the crowd, there came a great burst of applause, a buzz of conversation, the turning, shifting, nodding, staccato movements which meant approval in a mass of people. What the dickens? How? Stammered, Jock, when did she?

Did she? Emma, half smiling, half tearful, raised a protesting hand. I don't know. Don't ask me, dear. And don't hate me for it. I tried to tell her not to, but she insisted. And Jock, she's done it. I tell you she's done it.

They love the skirt. Listen to him. Don't want to, said Jock. Lead me to her. Angry, dear? Me? I'm proud of her. She hasn't only brains and looks, that little girl.

She's got nerve, the real kind. Gee, how did I ever have the gall to ask her to marry me? Together they sped toward the door that led to the dressing-rooms. Buck, his fine eyes more luminous than ever, as he looked at this wonder wife of his, met them at the entrance. "'She's waiting for you, Jock,' he said smiling. Jock took the steps in one leap. "'Well, T.A., said Emma,' said T.A., which burst of eloquence was interrupted abruptly by a short,

squat, dark man, who seized Emma's hand in her left and bucks in his right, and pumped them up and down vigorously. It was that volatile, voluble person known to the skirt trade as able-eye Frumkin of the Frumkin-form fitz skirt. It clings. "'I'm looking everywhere for you,' he panted. Then, his shrewd little eyes narrowing. You want to talk business? Not here, said Buck abruptly. Sure, here, insisted Frumkin.

Say, that's me. When I got a thing on my mind, I like to settle it. How much you take for the rights to that skirt. Take for it, exclaimed Emma, in the tone a mother would use to one who has suggested taking a beloved child from her. Now, wait a minute, don't get mad. You ain't started that skirt, right? It should have been advertised.

It's too much of a shock. You'll see. they won't buy. They're afraid of it. I'll take it off your hands and push it right, see? I offer you forty thousand for the rights to make that skirt and advertise it as the Frumkin full-flounce skirt. It flares. Emma smiled. How much? She asked quizzically. Abel I Frumkin gulped. Fifty thousand, he said. Fifty thousand, repeated Emma quietly, and looked at Buck. Thanks, Mr. Frumkin. I know now that if it's worth fifty thousand, he said. I'm not, but if it's worth 50,000 to you today as the Frumpkin full-flower skirt it flares, then it's worth

one hundred and fifty thousand to us as the T.A. Buck Balloon Petticoat it billows. And it was. End of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 of Emma McChesney and Company by Edna Ferber. This Libre-Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Phil Schoever. Chapter 6. sisters under their skin. Women who know the joys and sorrows of a pay envelope do not speak of

girls who work as working girls. Neither do they use the term laboring class, as one would speak of a distinct and separate race like the Ethiopian. Emma McChesney Buck was no exception to this rule. Her fifteen years of man-sized work for a man-sized salary in the employ of the T.A. Buck featherloom pedicode company New York precluded that. In those days, she had been Mrs. Emma Chesney, known from coast to coast, as the most successful traveling saleswoman in the business. It was due to her that no feminine clothes closet was complete without a featherloom dangling from one hook. During those 15 years, she had educated her son, Jack Vechesney, and made a man of him. She had worked, fought, saved,

triumphed, smiled under hardship, and she had acquired a broad and deep knowledge of those fascinating and diversified subjects which we lumped carelessly under the heading of human nature. She was Mrs. T. A. Buck now, wife of the head of the firm, and partner in the most successful skirt manufactory in the country. But the hard-working, clear-thinking, sane-acting habits of those fifteen years still clung. Perhaps this explained why every machine-girl in the the big bright shop, back of the offices, raised adoring eyes when Emma entered the workroom. Italian, German, Hungarian, Russian, they lifted their faces toward this source of love and sympathetic understanding, as naturally as a plant, turns its leaves toward the sun.

They glowed under her praise, they confided to her their troubles, they came to her with their joys, and they copied her clothes. This last caused her some uneasiness. When Mrs. T. A. Buck wore blue surge, an epidemic of blue surge broke out in the workroom. Did Emma's spring hat flaunt flowers? The elevators at closing time looked like gardens of bloom. If she appeared on Monday morning in a severely tailored white linen blouse, the shop on Tuesday was a Boston seminary in its starched primness.

It worries me, Emma told her. husband-partner. I can't help thinking of the story of the girl and the pet chameleon. What would happen if I were to forget myself some day and come down to work in black velvet and pearls? They'd manage it somehow, Buck assured her. I don't know just how, but I'm sure that 24 hours later our shop would look like a Buckingham drawing-room when the court is in mourning. Emma never ceased to marvel at their ingenuity, at their almost uncanny clothes instinct. Their cheap skirts hung and fitted with an art as perfect as that of a 57th Street modiste. Their blouses, in some miraculous way, were of today's style,

down to the last detail of cuff or collar or stitching. Their hats were of the same shape that the season demanded, set at the angle that the season approved, and finished with just that repression of decoration, which is known as single trimming. They wore their clothes with a cheek that would make the far-famed Parisian-Oteer look doughty, and down at the heels in comparison. Upper Fifth Avenue, during the shopping or tea hour, has been sung, painted, vaunted, boasted. Its furs and millinery, its eyes and figure, its complexion and ankles, have flashed out at us from 10,000 magazine covers have been ejective in reams of Sunday supplement stories.

Who will picture Lower Fifth Avenue between five and six when New York's unsung beauties pour into the streets from a thousand loft buildings? There's is no mere empty pink and white prettiness. Poverty can make prettiness almost poignantly lovely, for it works with a scalpel. Your 26th Street Beauty has a certain wistful appeal that your 46th Street Beauty lacks. Her very bravado, too, which falls just short of boldness, adds a final piquant touch. In the face of the girl who works, whether she be a spindle-legged errand girl or a ten thousand a year foreign buyer, you will find both vivacity and depth of expression.

What she loses in softness and bloom, she gains into something that peeps from her eyes, that lurks in the corners of her mouth. Emma never tired of studying them, these girls, with their firm slim throats, their lovely faces, their oriental eyes, and their conscious grace. Often, as she looked, an unaccountable mist of tears would blur her vision. So that sunny little room whose door was marked Mrs. Buck had come to be more than a mere private office for the transaction of business. It was a clearing-house for trouble.

It was a shrine, a confessional, and a court of justice. When Carmela Colerossi, her face swollen with weeping, told a story of parental harshness grown unbearable. Emma would put aside business to listen, and six o'clock would find her seated in the dark and smelly Colarossi kitchen, trying with all her tact in patience and sympathy, to make home life possible again for the flashing-eyed Carmela. When the deft brown fingers of Otis Marcos became clumsy at her machine, and her wage slumped unaccountably from sixteen to six dollars a week, it was in Emma's quiet little office.

that it became clear why Ottie's eyes were shadowed and why Atty's mouth droop so pathetically. Emma prescribed a love filter made up of common sense, understanding, and world wisdom. Ate took it only half comprehending, but sure of its power. In a week, Atty's eyes were shadowless, her lips smiling, her pay envelope bulging. But it was in Sophie Kumpf that she was in. the T.A. Buck Company best exemplified its policy. Sophie Compe had come to Buck's thirty years before, slim, pink-cheeked, brown-haired.

She was a grandmother now, at forty-six broad-bosomed, broad-hipped, but still pink of cheek and brown of hair. In those thirty years she had spent just three away from bucks. She had brought her children into the world. She had fed them and clothe them and sent them to school. had Sophie, and seen them married, and helped them to bring their children into the world in turn. In her round-red, wholesome face, shown a great wisdom, much love, and that infinite understanding

which is born only of bitter experience. She had come to Bucks when old T.A. was just beginning to make Featherlooms a national institution. She had seen his struggles, his prosperity. had grieved at his death. She had watched young T.A. take the reins in his unaccustomed hands, and she had gloried in Emma McChesney's rise from office to salesroom, from salesroom to road, from road to private office and recognized authority.

Sophie had left her early work far behind. She had her own desk now in the busy workshop, and it was she who allotted the piecework, marked it in her much-thung ledger that powerful ledger which at the week's end decided just how plump or thin each pay envelope would be so the shop and office at t a buck's were bound together by many ties of affection and sympathy and loyalty and these bonds were strongest where at one end they touched emma mchesney buck and at the other faithful sophy cump each a triumphant example of woman in business. It was at this comfortable stage of Featherloom Affairs that the movement struck the T.A. Buck Company. Emma McChesney Buck had never mingled much in movements.

Not that she lacked sympathy with them, she often approved of them heart and soul, but she had been heard to say that the movers got on her nerves. Those well-dressed glib staccato ladies who spoke with such easy, from platforms and whose pictures stared out at one from the women's page failed somehow to convince her. When Emma approved a new movement, it was generally in spite of them, never because of them. She was brazenly unapologetic when she said that she would rather listen to ten minutes of Sophie Kumpf's world wisdom than to an hour's talk by the most magnetic and silken-clad spellbinder

in any cause. for fifteen business years in the office on the road and in the thriving workshop emma chesney had met working women galore Women in offices, women in stores, women in hotels, chambermaids, clerks, buyers, waitresses, actresses and road companies, women demonstrators, occasional traveling saleswomen, women in factories, scrub women, stenographers, models, every grade type and variety of working women, trained and untrained. She never missed a chance to talk with them. She never failed to learn from them.

She had been one of them and still was. She was in the position of one who was on the inside looking out. Those other women urging this cause or that were on the outside striving to peer in. The movement struck T.A. Bucks at eleven o'clock Monday morning. Eleven o'clock Monday morning in the middle of a busy fall season is not a propitious moment for idle chit-chat. The three women who stepped out of the list. at the Buck Company's floor, looked very much out of place in that hummingly busy establishment

and appeared, on the surface at least, very chit-chatty indeed, so much so that T.A. Buck, glancing up from the cards which had preceded them, had difficulty in repressing a frown of annoyance. T. A. Buck, during his college days, and for a lamentably long time after, had been known as Bo Buck, because of his faultless clothes and his charming manner his eyes had something to do with it too no doubt he had lived down the title by sheer force of business ability no one thought of using the nickname now though the clothes the manner and the eyes were the same at the entrance of the three women he had been engrossed in the difficult task of selling a fall line to manny nussbaum of portland oregon manny was what is known as a temperamental buyer he couldn't be forced he couldn't be coaxed he couldn't be led but when he liked the line he bought like mad never canceled and t a buck had just got him going it spoke volumes for his self-control that he could advance toward the waiting three his manner correct his expression bland i am mr buck he said mrs buck is very much engaged i am Understand your visit has something to do with the girls in the shop.

I am sure our manager will be able to answer any questions. The eldest woman raised a protesting, white-clubbed hand. Oh, no, no, indeed. We must see Mrs. Buck. She spoke in the crisp, decisive platform tones of one who is often addressed as Madame Chairman. Buck took a firmer grip on his self-control. I'm sorry, Mrs. Buck is in the cutting room.

we'll wait said the lady brightly she stepped back apace this is miss susan h croft indicating a rather sparse person of very certain years but i need scarcely introduce her scarcely murmured buck and wondered why this is my daughter miss gladys orton wells buck found himself wondering why this slim negative creature should have such sad eyes There came an impatient snort from Manny Nussbaum. Buck waved a hasty hand in the direction of Emma's office. If you'll wait there, I'll send in to Mrs. Buck. The three turned toward Emma's bright little office. Buck scribbled a hasty word on one of the cards. Emma McChesney Buck was leaning over the great cutting table, shears in hand.

It might almost be said that she sprawled. Her eyes were very bright, and her eyes were very bright, and her cheeks were very pink. Across the table stood a designer in two cutters, and they were watching Emma with an intentness as flattering as it was sincere. They were looking not only at the cloth, but at an idea.

Get that? Asked Emma crisply, and tapped the pattern spread before her with the point of her shears. That gives you the fullness without bunching, do you see? Sure, assented Coritz head designer, but when you get it cut, you'll find this piece is wasted, ain't it?' He marked out a triangular section of cloth with one expert forefinger.

"'No, that works into the ruffle,' explained Emma. "'Here, I'll cut it, then you'll see.' She grasped the shears firmly in her right hand, smooth the cloth spread before her with a nervous little pat of her left, brushed her bright hair back from her forehead, and prepared to cut. At which critical moment there entered Annie the errand-gurled with the three bits of white pasteboard. Emma glanced down at them and waved Annie away. Can't see them, busy.

Annie stood her ground. Mr. Buck said you'd see him. They're waiting. Emma picked up one of the cards. On it, Buck had scribbled a single word, movers. Mrs. T.A. Buck smiled. A little malicious gleam came into her eyes. "'Show him in here, Annie,' she commanded with a wave of the huge shears.

"'I'll teach them to interrupt me when I've got my hands in the bluing water.' She bent over the table again, measuring with her keen eye. When the three were ushered in a moment later, she looked up briefly and nodded, then bent over the table again. But in that brief moment she had the three marked, indexed, and pigeon-hold. If one could have looked into that lightning mind of hers, one would have found something like this. What Ida Tarbell calls restless women. Money and always have had it. Those hats were born in one of those exclusive little shops off the avenue.

Rich, but somber. They think they're advanced, but they still resent the triumph of the motor-car over the horse. That girl can't call her a soul her own. good eyes put too sad he probably didn't suit mother what she said was howdy do we're just bringing a new skirt into the world i thought you might like to be in at the berth how very interesting chirped the two older women the girl said nothing but a look of anticipation brightened her eyes it deepened and glowed as emma chesney buck bent to her task and the great jaws of the shears opened and the great jaws of the shears opened and her eyes and shut on the virgin cloth. Six pairs of eyes followed the fascinating steel before which the cloth rippled and fell away as water is cleft by the prow of a staunch little boat.

Around the curves went the shears, guided by Emma's firm white hands, snipping, slashing, doubling on itself, a very swashbuckler of a shears. There! exclaimed Emma at last, and dropped the shears on the table with a clatter. Put that together and see whether it makes a skirt or not. Now, ladies, the three drew a long breath.

It was the sort of sound that comes up from the crowd when a skyrocket has gone off successfully with a final shower of stars. Do you do that often? ventured Mrs. Orton Wells. Often enough to keep my hand in, replied Emma, and led the way to her office. The three followed in silence. They were strangely silent, too, as they seated themselves around Emma Buck's desk. Curiously enough, it was a subdued Miss Arton Wells, who was the first to speak. I'll never rest, she said, until I see that skirt finished and actually ready to wear.

She smiled at Emma. When she did that, you saw that Miss Arton Wells had her charm. Emma smiled back and patted the girl's hand just once. At that there came a look into Miss Artenwell's eyes, and you saw that most decidedly she had her charm. Up spoke Mrs. Artinwell's. Gladys is such an enthusiast. That's really her reason for being here.

Gladys is very much interested in working girls. In fact, we are all, as you probably know, intensely interested in the working woman. Thank you, said Emma Chesney Buck. That's very kind. We working women are very grateful to you. We? exclaimed Mrs. Orton Wells and Miss Susan Croft blankly, and in perfect time.

Emma smiled sweetly. Surely you'll admit that I'm a working woman. Miss Susan H. Croft was not a person to be trifled with. She elucidated acidly. We mean women who work with their hands. By what power do you think those shears were moved across the cutting table? We don't cut our patterns with a Ouija board. Mrs. Orton Wells rustled protestingly.

But, my dear Mrs. Buck, you know we mean women of the laboring class. I'm in this place of business, from nine to five, money to Saturday inclusive. If that doesn't make me a member of the laboring class, I don't want to belong." It was here that Mrs. Orton Wells showed herself a woman not to be trifled with. She moved forward to the edge of her chair, fixed Emma Buck with determined eyes, and swept into midstream sales spread. Don't be frivolous, Mrs. Buck. We are here on a serious errand.

It ought to interest you vitally because of the position you occupy in the world of business. We're launching a campaign against the extravagant, ridiculous, and oftentimes indecent dress of the working girl, with a special reference to the girl who works in garment factories. They squander their earnings in costumes, absurdly unfitted to their station in life. Our plan is to influence them in the direction of neatness, modesty, and economy in dress. At present each tries to outdo the other in style and variety of costume. Their shoes are high-heeled, cloth-topped, their blouses lacy and colorless, their hats absurd.

We propose a costume which shall be neat, becoming and appropriate. Not exactly a uniform, perhaps, but something with a fixed idea in cut, color, and style. A corps of twelve young ladies belonging to our best families has been chosen to speak to the shop girls at noon meetings on the subject of good taste, health, and morality in women's dress. My daughter Gladys is one of them. In this way, we hope to convince them that simplicity and practicality and neatness are the only proper notes in the costume of the working girl, occupying as you do a position unique in the business world, Mrs. Buck. We expect much from your cooperation with us in this cause. Emma McChesney Buck had been gazing at Mrs. Artin-Wells,

with an intentness as flattering as it was unfaigned. But at the close of Mrs. Artin-Wells' speech, she was strangely silent. She glanced down at her shoes. Now Emma McChesney-Buck had a week. for smart shoes, which her slim, well-arched foot, excused. Hers were what might be called intelligent-looking feet. There was nothing thick, nothing clumsy, nothing awkward about them, and Emma treated them with the consideration they deserved.

They were shot now in a pair of slim, aristocratic, and modest ties, above which the grateful eye caught a flashing glimpse of black silk stocking. Then her eye traveled up her smartly tailored skirt, up the bodice of that well-made and becoming costume, until her glance rested on her own shoulder and paused. Then she looked up at Mrs. Orton Wells, the eyes of Mrs. Artin-Wells, Miss Susan H. Croft, and Miss Gladys Artin-Wells had by some strange power of magnetism, followed the path of Emma's eyes. They finished just one second behind her, so that when she raised her eyes it was to

encounter theirs. I have explained, retorted Mrs. Artenwell's tartly, in reply to nothing, seemingly, that our problem is with the factory girl. She represents a distinct and separate class. Emma McChesney Buck nodded. I understand. Our girls are very young, 18, 20, 20, at eighteen are thereabouts practical garments haven't the strong appeal that you might think they have they should have insisted mrs arton wells maybe said emma buck gently but to me it seems just as reasonable to argue that an apple tree has no right to wear pink and white blossoms in the spring so long as it is going to bear sombre russets in autumn miss susan hcroft russell

indignantly. Then you refuse to work with us. You will not consent to Miss Arton Wells's speaking to the girls in your shop this noon? Emma looked at Gladys Artin Wells. Gladys was wearing black, and black did not become her. It made her creamy skin sallow. Her suit was severely tailored,

and her hat was small and harshly outlined, and her hair was drawn back from her face. All this, in spite of the fact that Miss Artin Wells was of the limp and fragile type, which demands ruffles, fluffiness, flowing lines, and frou-frou. Emma's glance at the suppressed Gladys was as fleeting as it was keen, but it suffice to bring her to a decision. She pressed a buzzer at her desk. I shall be happy to have Miss Arton Wells speak to the girls in our shop this noon,

and as often as she cares to speak. If she can convince the girls that a fixed idea in cut color and style is the thing to be adopted by shop workers, I am perfectly willing that they be convinced. Then to Annie, who appeared in answer to the buzzer, will you tell Sophie Comph to come here, please? Mrs. Orton Wells beamed. The somber plumes in her correct hat bobbed and dipped

to Emma. The austere Miss Susan H. Croft, unbent in a nutcracker smile. Only Miss Gladys Orton Wells remained silent, thoughtful, unenthusiastic. Her eyes were on Emma's face. A heavy, comfortable step sounded in the hall outside the office door. Emma turned with a smile to the stout, motherly, red-cheeked woman who entered, smoothing her coarse brown hair with work-ruffened fingers. Emma took one of those calloused hands at hers. Sophie, we need your advice. This is Mrs. Sophie Compe, Mrs. Arton Wells, Miss Susan H. Croft.

Sophie threw her a keen glance. She knew that name. And Miss Artin Wells. Of the four, Sophie was the most at ease. Pleased to meet you, said Sophie Compe. The three bowed but did not commit themselves. her hand still on Sophie's elaborated. Sophie Kumpf has been with the TA Buck Company for 30 years.

She could run this business single-handed if she had to. She knows any machine in the shop, can cut a pattern, keeps books, run the entire plant if necessary. If there's anything about petticoats that Sophie doesn't know, it's because it hasn't been invented yet. Sophie was 16 when she came to Bucks.

I've heard she was the prettiest and best-dressed girl in the shop. Oh, now, Mrs. Bach, remonstrated Sophie. Emma tried to frown as she surveyed Sophie's bright eyes, her rosy cheeks, her broad bosom, her ample hips, all that made Sophie an object to comfort and rest the eye. Don't dispute Sophie. Sophie has educated her children, married them off, and welcomed their children. She thinks that excuses her for having been frivolous and extravagant at sixteen. But we know better, don't we?

I'm using you as a horrible example, Sophie. Sophie turned affably to the listening three. Don't let her string you, she said and winked one knowing I. Mrs. Artenwells stiffened, Miss Susan H. Croft, congealed, but Miss Gladys Artonwells smiled, and then Emma knew she was right. Sophie, who's the prettiest girl in our shop, and the best dressed? Lily Bernstein, Sophie made prompt answer. Send her into us, will you?

And give her credit for lost time when she comes back to the shop. Sophie, with a last beamingly good-natured smile, withdrew. Five minutes later, when Lily Bernstein entered the office, Sophie qualified as a judge of beauty. Lily Bernstein was a tiger-liddle. Lily, all browns and golds and creams, all graciousness and warmth and lovely curves. As she came into the room, Gladys Artin Wells seemed as bloodless and pale and ineffectual as a white moth beside a gorgeous tawny butterfly.

Emma presented the girl as formerly as she had Sophie Kump, and Lily Bernstein smiled upon them, and her teeth were as white and even as one knew they were. would be before she smiled. Lily had taken off her shop apron. Her gown was blue serge, cheap in quality, flawless as to cut and fit, and incredibly becoming. Above it her vivid face glowed like a golden rose. Lily, said Emma, Miss Arton Wells is going to speak to the girls this noon.

I thought you might help by telling her whatever she wants to know about the girl's work and all that, and by making her feel at home. Well, sure, said Lily, and smiled again, her heartwarming smile. I'd love to. Miss Harton Wells, went on Emma smoothly, once to speak to the girls about clothes. Lily looked again at Miss Artin Wells, and she did not mean to be cruel. Then she looked quickly at Emma to detect a possible joke, but Mrs. Buck's face bore no trace of a smile.

Clothes, repeated Lily, and a slow red mounted to Gladys Orton Wells' pale face. When Lily went out Sunday afternoons she might have passed for a millionaire's daughter if she hadn't been so well-dressed. Suppose you take Miss Orton Wells into the shop, suggested Emma, so that she may have some idea of the size and character of our family before she speaks to it. How long shall you want to speak?" Miss Artenwell's started nervously, stammered a little, stopped. Oh, ten minutes, said Mrs. Arton Wells graciously.

Five, said Gladys quickly, and followed Lily Bernstein into the workroom. Miss Artenwells and Miss Susan H. Croft gazed after them. Rather attractive that girl, in a coarse way, mused Mrs. Artin-Wells. If only we can teach them to avoid the cheap and tawdry, if only we can train them to appreciate the finer things in life. Of course, their life is peculiar. Their problems are not our problems. Their problems are just exactly our problems, interrupted Emma crisply.

They use garlic instead of onion, and they don't bathe as often as we do. But then perhaps we wouldn't either, if we hadn't tubs and showers so handy. In the shop, queer things were happening to Gladys Orton Wells. At her entrance into the big workroom, 100 pairs of eyes had lifted, dropped, and in that one look condemned her hat, suit, blouse, veil, and tut ensemble. When you are on piecework, you squander very little time gazing at uplift visitors in the wrong kind of clothes.

Gladys Artin Wells looked about the big bright workroom. the noonday sun streamed in from a dozen great windows. There seemed somehow to be a look of content and capableness about those heads bent so busily over the stitching. It looks pleasant, said Gladys Orton Welles. It ain't bad. Of course it's hard sitting all day, but I'd rather do that than stand from eight to six behind a counter, and there's good money in it. Gladys Artin Wells turned wistful eyes.

on friendly little Lily Bernstein. I'd like to earn money. She said, I'd like to work. Well, why don't you? demanded Lily. Works all the style this year. They're all doing it. Look at the Vanderbills and that Morgan girl,

and the whole crowd. These days, you can't tell whether the girl at the machine next to you lives in the Bronx or on Fifth Avenue. It must be wonderful to earn your own clothes. Believe me, laughed lily bernstein it ain't so wonderful when you've had to do it all your life she studied the pale girl before her with brows thoughtfully knit lily had met too many uplifters to be in awe of them besides a certain warm-hearted friendliness was hers for every one she met so like the child she was she spoke what was in her mind say listen dearie i wouldn't wear black if i was you and that plain stuff it don't suit you i'm like that too there's some things i can wear and others i look fears in i'd like you in one of the big flat hats and a full skirt like you see in the ants with lots of ribbons and taggings and bows on it do you know what i mean

my mother was a van cleave said gladys drearily as though that explained everything so it might have to any but a lily bernstein lily didn't know what a van cleave was but she sensed it as a drawback don't you care everybody's folks have got something to matter with em especially when you're a girl but if i was you i'd go right ahead and do what i wanted to in the doorway at the far end of the shop appeared emma with her two visitors mrs arton wells stopped and said something to a girl at a machine and her very posture and smile reeked of an offensive kindliness, a condescending patronage. Gladys Orton Wells did a strange thing. She saw her mother coming toward her. She put one hand on Lily Bernstein's arm, and she spoke hurriedly, and in a little gasping voice.

Listen, would you marry a man who hadn't any money to speak of, and no sort of family, if you loved him? even if your mother wouldn't wouldn't would i say you go out to moron and buy yourself one of them floppy hats and a lace waist over flesh-colored chiffon and get married in it don't get it white with your coloring get it kind of cream you're so grand and thin this year's things will look lovely on you a bell shrilled somewhere in the shop a hundred machines stopped their whirring a hundred heads came up with a sigh of relief. Chairs were pushed back, aprons unbuttoned. Emma McChesney-Buck stepped forward and raised a hand for attention. The noise of a hundred tongues was stilled. Girls, Miss Gladys Orton-Wells, is going to speak to you for five minutes on the subject of dress. Will you give her your attention, please? The five minutes will be added to your noon hour. Gladys Orton- Wells

looked down at her hands for one moment. terrified moment. Then she threw her head up bravely. There was no lack of color in her cheeks now. She stepped to the middle of the room. What I have to say won't take five minutes, she said in her clear, well-bred tones. You all dress so smartly, and I'm such a doubt. I just want to ask you whether you think I ought to get blue or that new shade of gray for a traveling suit. And the shop, hardened to the eccentricities of Noonday speakers, made composed and ready answer. Oh, get the blue, it's always good. Thank you, left Gladys Artenwells, and was off down the hall and away,

with never a backward glance at her gasping and outraged mother. Emma McChesney Buck took Lily Bernstein's soft cheek between her thumb and forefinger, and pinched it ever so fondly. I knew you'd do it, Judy O'Grady, she said. Judy O'Hoo? O'Grady, a lady famous in history. Oh, now quit your kidding, Mrs. Buck, said Lily Bernstein. End of Chapter 6.

Chapter 7 of Emma Machesney and Company by Edna Ferber. This Lieber-Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Phil Schenever. Chapter 7, An Etude for Emma. If you listen long enough and earnestly enough, and with ear sufficiently attuned to the music of this sphere, there will come to you this reward. The violins and oboes and cellos and brasses of humanity, which seemed all at variance with each other, will unite as one instrument, seeming discords and dissonances will blend

into harmony, and the wail and blare and thrum of Humanities Orchestra will sound in your ear the sublime melody of that great symphony called Life. In her sunny little private office on the twelfth floor of the great loft building that housed the T.A. Buck Company, Emma McChesney Buck, sat listening to the street sounds that were wafted to her, mellowed by height and distance. The noises taken separately were the nerve tracking sounds common to a busy downtown New York cross street. By the time they reached the little office on the twelfth floor, they were softened, mellowed, de-brutalized, welded into a weird choir-like chat, first high, then low, rising, swelling,

dying away, rising again to a dull roar, with now and then vast undertones like the rumbling of a cathedral pipe organ. knew that the high clear tenor note was the shrill cry of the lame newsy at the corner of 6th Avenue and 26th Street. Those deep thunderous bass notes were the combined reverberation of nearby L-trains, distant subway and clanging surface cars. That sharp staccato was a motor-man clanging his bell of warning. These things she knew.

But she liked, nevertheless, to shut her eyes for a moment. in the midst of her busy day, and listened to the chant of the city as it came up to her, subdued, softened, strangely beautified. The sound saddened even while it filled her with a certain exultation. We have no one word for that sensation. The German, there's a language, has it. Veltzmes. As distance softened the harsh sounds to her ears,

so time and experience had given her a perspective on life. itself. She saw it not as a series of incidents, pleasant and unpleasant, but as a great universal scheme too mighty to comprehend. A scheme that always worked itself out in some miraculous way. She had had had a singularly full life had Emma McChesney Buck, a life replete with work, leavened by sorrows, sweetened with happiness, these ingredients made for tolerance. She saw for example, how the capable, modern staff in the main business office had forged ahead of old Pop Henderson. Pop Henderson had been head bookkeeper for years, but the pen in his trembling hand made queer

spider remarks in the ledgers now, and his figure seven was very likely to look like a drunken letter Z. The great bulk of his work was done by the capable comely Miss Kelly, who could juggle figures like a sinquivali. His shaking, blue-veined, yellow hand was no match for Miss Kelly's cool, firm fingers. But he stayed on at Bucks, and no one dreamed of insulting him with talk of a pension, least of all Emma. She saw the work-worn pathetic old man, not as a figure, but as a symbol.

Jock McChesney, very young, very handsome, very successful, coming on a work-worned, to New York from Chicago to be married in June, found his mother wrapped in this contemplative calm. Now, Emma McChesney Buck, mother of an about-to-be-married son, was also surprisingly young and astonishingly handsome and highly successful. Jock, in a lucid moment the day before his wedding, took occasion to comment rather resentfully on his mother's attitude. "'It seems to me,' he said gloomily, that for a mother's moment of his mother's attitude, that for a

mother whose only son is about to be handed over to what the writers call the other woman, you're pretty resigned, not to say cheerful. Emma glanced up at him as he stood there, so tall and straight and altogether good to look at, and the glow of love and pride in her eyes belied the lightness of her words. I know it, she said with mock seriousness, and it worries me. I can't imagine why I fail to feel those pangs that mothers are supposed to suffer at this time. I ought to rend my garments and beat my breast, but I can't help thinking of what a stunning girl Grace Gault is, and what a brain she has, and how lucky you are to get her.

Any girl with the future that girl had in the advertising field, who'll give up 4,000 a year and her independence to marry a man, does it for love, Let me tell you. If anybody knows you better than your mother, son, I'd hate to know who it is. And if anybody loves you more than your mother, well, we needn't go into that, because it would have to be hypothetical anyway. You see, Chuck, I've loved you so long and so well that I know your faults as well as your virtues, and I love you not in spite of them, but because of them.

Oh, I don't know, interrupted Jock with some warmth. I'm not perfect, but a fellow perfect? Jock McChessney. What I think of Grace's feelings when she discovers that you never close a closet door? When I contemplate her emotions on hearing your howl at finding one seed in your orange juice at breakfast, when she learns of your secret and unholy passion for neckties

that have a dash of red in them, and how you have to be restrained by force from— With a simulated roar of rage, Jacques McChessney fell upon his mother with a series of bare hugs that left her flushed, panting, limp, but bright-eyed. It was to her husband that Emma revealed the real source of her Spartan calm.

The wedding was over. There had been a quiet little celebration after which Jacques McChessney had gone west with his very lovely young wife, Emma had kissed her very tenderly, very soberly after the brief ceremony. Mrs. McChesney, she had said, and her voice shook ever so little, Mrs. Jock McChessney, and the new Mrs. McChesney, a most astonishingly intuitive young woman indeed, had understood. T. A. Buck, being a man, puzzled over it a little. That night when Emma had reached the

kimono and hair-brushing stage, he ventured to speak his wonderment. Do you know, Emma, you were about the calmest and most serene mother that I ever did see at a son's wedding? Of course I didn't expect you to have hysterics or anything like that. I've always said that when it comes to repose and self-control, you could make the German empress look like a hoyden. But I always thought that at such times a mother viewed her new daughter. daughter-in-law as a rival, that the very sight of her filled her with jealous rage, like that

of a tigress whose cub is taken from her. I must say, you were so smiling and urbane that I thought it was almost uncomplimentary to the young couple. You didn't even weep, you unnatural woman." Emma seated before her dressing-table, stopped brushing her hair, and sat silent a moment, down with unseen eyes at the brush in her hand. I know it, T.A. Would you like to have me tell you why? He came over to her then, and ran a tender hand, down the length of her bright hair.

Then he kissed the top of her head. This satisfactory performance he capped by saying, I think I know why. It's because the minister hesitated a minute, looking from you to grace and back again, not knowing which was the bride. The way you looked in that dress, Emma, was enough to reconcile any woman to losing her entire family. T.A. You do say the nicest things to me. Like them, Emma? Like them. You know perfectly well that you never can offend me by making me compliments like that. I not only like them, I actually believe them. That's because I mean them, Emma.

Now out with that reason. Emma stood up then and put her hands on his shoulders, but she was not looking at him. She was gazing past him, her eyes, dreamy, contemplative. I don't know whether I'll be able to explain to you just how I feel about it. I'll probably make a mess of it, but I'll try. You see, dear, it's just this way. Two years ago, a year ago even, I might have felt bad. just that sensation of personal resentment and loss.

But somehow lately I've been looking at life through—how shall I put it, through seven-league glasses. I used to see life in its relation to me and mine. Now I see it in terms of my relation to it. Do you get me? I was a soloist, and the world my orchestral accompaniment. Lately, I've been content just to step back with the other instruments and let my my little share go to make up a more perfect hole.

In those years, long before I met you, when Jock was all I had in the world, I worked and fought and saved, that he might have the proper start, the proper training, and environment. And I did succeed in giving him those things. Well, as I looked at him there today, I saw him not as my son, my property, that was going out of my control, into the hands of another woman but as a link in the great chain that i had helped to forge a link as strong and sound and perfect as i could make it i saw him not as my boy jock mchessney but as a unit when i am gone i shall still live in him and he in turn will live in his children there i've muddled it haven't i as i said i would but i think and she looked into her husband husband's glowing eyes. No, I'm sure you understand.

And when I die, T.A., you, Emma? And he held her close. Then held her off to look at her through quizzical, appreciative eyes. Why, girl, I can't imagine you doing anything so passive. In the busy year that followed, anyone watching Emma McChesney Buck as she worked and played and constructed and helped others to work and play and construct would have agreed with T.A. Buck. She did not seem a woman who was looking at life objectively.

As she went about her home in the evening, or the office, the workroom, or the showrooms during the day, adjusting this, arranging that, smoothing out snarls, solving problems of business or household, she was very much alive, very vital, very personal, very electric. In that year there came to her many letters from Jock and Grace, happy letters, all of them, some with an undertone of great seriousness, as is fitting when two people are readjusting their lives. Then in the spring came the news of the baby. The telegram came to Emma as she sat in her office near the close of a busy day. As she read it and re-read it, the slip of paper became a misty yellow with vague lines of blue,

dancing about on it. Then it became a blur of nothing in particular, as Emma's tears fell on it in a little shower of joy and pride and wonder at the eternal miracle. Then she dried her eyes, mopped the telegram, and her lace jab it impartially, went across the hall and opened the door marked T.A. Buck. T.A. looked up from his desk, smiled, held out a hand. Girl, a boy. girl of course said emma tremulously and her name is emma mchesney t a stood up and put an arm about his wife's shoulders lean on me grandma he said fiend retorted emma and re-read the telegram happily she folded it then with a pensive sigh i hope she'll look like grace but with jock's eyes they were wasted in a man at any rate she ought to be a raving tearing beauty with that father and mother. What about her grandmother when it comes to looks?

Yes, and think of the brain she'll have. Buck reminded her excitedly, great Scott, with a grandmother who has made the T.A. Buck, Featherloom, Petticoat, a household word, and a mother who was the cleverest woman advertising copywriter in New York. This young lady ought to be a composite, Hetty Green, Madame Dysdall, Hepatia, and Emma McChesney-Book. She'll be a lady, wizard of finance, or a—she'll be nothing of the kind, Emma disputed calmly.

That child will be a throwback. The third generation generally is. With a militant mother and a grandmother such as that child has, she'll just naturally be a blinging vine. She'll be a reversion to type. She'll be the kind who'll make eyes and wear pale blue and be crazy about new embroidery stitches. Just mark my words, T.A. Buck had a brilliant idea.

Why don't you pack a bag and run over to Chicago for a few days and see this marvel of the age? But Emma shook her head. Not now, T.A. later. Let the delicate machinery of that new household adjust itself and begin to run smoothly and sweetly again, anyone who might come in now, even Jock's mother, would be only an outsider. So she waited very patiently and considerately. There was much to occupy her mind that spring.

Business was unexpectedly and gratifyingly good. Then, too, one of their pet dreams was being realized. They were to have their own house in the country at Westchester. together they had poured over the plans. It was to be a house of wide, spacious verandas, of fireplaces, of bookshel, of great bright windows and white enamel, and cheerful chintz. By the end of May it was finished, furnished, and complete. At which a surprising thing happened, and yet not so surprising, a demon of restlessness seized Emma McChesney Buck.

It had been a busy, happy winter filled with work. Now that it was finished, there came upon Emma and Buck, that unconscious and quite natural irritation, which follows a long winter spent together by two people, no matter how much in harmony. Emma pulled herself up now and then, horrified to find a rasping note of impatience in her voice. Buck found himself once or twice,

fairly caught in a little whirlpool of ill-temper of his own making. These conditions they discovered almost simultaneously, and, like the comrades they were, they talked it over and came to a sensible understanding. "'We're a bit ragged and saw-edged,' said Emma. "'We're getting on each other's nerves. What we need is a vacation from each other. This morning I found myself on the verge of snapping at you, at you. You imagine, T.A., whereupon Buck came forward with his confession.

It's a couple of late cases of spring fever. You've been tied to this office all winter, so of I. We need a change. You've had too much paddycoats, too much husband, too much cutting room and sales room and rush orders, and business generally. Too much feather loom and not enough foolishness. He came over and put a gentle hand on his wife's shoulder, a thing strictly against the rules during business hours. And Emma not only permitted it, but reached over and covered his hand with her own. You're tired and you're a wee bit nervous, so go on, said T.A. ever so gently, and kissed his wife. Go on, get out of here. And Emma got.

She went, not to the mountains or the seashore, but with her face to the west. In her trunks were tiny garments, garments pink-ribboned, blue-ribboned, things embroidered, and scalloped, and hem-stitched, and handmade, and lacy. She went, looking less grandmotherly than ever, in her smart blue tailor-suit, her rakish hat, her quietly correct gloves and slim shoes, and, and softly becoming Jebeau. Her husband had got her a compartment, had laden her down with books, magazines, fruits, flowers, candy.

Five minutes before the train pulled out, Emma looked about the little room and sighed even while she smiled. You're an extravagant boy, T.A. I look as if I were equipped for a dash to the pole instead of an eighteen-hour run to Chicago, but I love you for it. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to confess how I like having a whole compartment just for myself. You see, a compartment always will spell luxury to me. There were all those years on the road, you know, when I often considered myself in luck

to get an upper on a local of a branch line that threw you around in your berth like a bean and a tin can every time the engineer stopped or started. looked at his watch, then stooped in farewell. Quite suddenly they did not want to part. They had grown curiously used to each other these two. Emma found herself clinging to this man with the tender eyes, and Buck held her close, regardless of train schedules. Emma rushed him to the platform and watched him wide-eyed

as he swung off the slowly-moving train. Come on along! she called almost tearfully. looked up at her at her trim erect figure at her clear youthful coloring at the brightness of her eye if you want to get a reputation for comedy he laughed tell someone on that train that you're going to visit your granddaughter jock met her at the station in chicago and drove her home in a very dapper and glittering black runabout grace wanted to come down he explained as they sped along but they're changing the baby's food or something and she didn't want to leave you know those nurses emma felt a curious little pang this was her boy her baby talking about his baby and nurses she had a sense of unreality he turned to her with shining eyes that's a stunning get-up blondie honestly you're a whiz mother grace has told all her friends that you're coming and their mothers are going to call but good lord you look like my young you're a whiz mother grace has told all her friends that you're coming and their mothers are going to call but good lord you look like my young younger sister, on the square you do." The apartment reached.

It seemed to Emma that she floated across the walk and up the stairs, so eagerly did her heart cry out for a glimpse of this little being who is flesh of her flesh. Grace a little pale, but more beautiful than ever, met them at the door. Her arms went about Emma's neck. Then she stood her handsome mother-in-law off and gazed at her. You wonder, how lovely you look. Good heavens, are they wearing that kind of hat in New York? And those collars.

I haven't seen a thing like them here. East is east and west is west, and where's that child? Demanded Emma McChesney Buck. Where's my baby? Shhh! Came in a sibilant duet from Grace and Jock. Not now. She's sleeping.

We were up with her for three hours last night. It was the new food. She's not used to it yet. But you foolish children, can't I peek at her? Oh, dear, no, said Grace hastily. We never go into her room when she's asleep. This is your room, Mother, dear, and just as soon as she wakes up, this is your bath.

You'll want to freshen up. Dear me, who could have hung the baby's little shirt here? The nurse, I suppose, if I don't attend to every little thing. Emma took off her hat and smoothed her hair with light, deft fingers. She turned a smiling face toward Jock and Grace standing there in the doorway. Now don't bother, dear, if you knew how I love having that little shirt to look at, and I've such things in my trunk. Wait till you see them. So she possessed her soul in patience for one hour, two hours.

At the end of the second hour, a little whale went up. Grace vanished down the hall. Emma, her heart beating very fast, followed her. A moment later she was bending over a very pink morsel with very blue eyes, and she was saying over and over in a rapture of delightful idiocy, Say hello to your grandmother, yes, her is. Say hello, Granny. And her longing arms reached down to take up her namesake. Not now, Grace said hastily.

we never play with her just before feeding time we find that it excites her and that's bad for her digestion dear me marveled emma i don't remember worrying about jock's digestion when he was two and a half months old it was thus that emma mchesney buck for many years accustomed to leadership learned to follow humbly and in silence she had always been the orbit about which her world revolved years of brilliant success of triumphant execution had not spoiled her or made her offensively dictatorial but they had taught her a certain self-confidence had accustomed her to a degree of deference from others now she was the humblest of the satellites revolving about this son of the household she learned to tiptoe when small emma chesney was sleeping she learned that the modern mother does not approve of the holding of a child in one's arms no matter how those arms might be aching to feel the frail weight of the soft sweet body she who had brought a child into the world who had had to train that child alone had raised him single-handed had educated him denied herself for him made a man of him now found herself all ignorant of twentieth-century child-raising methods she learned strange things about barley-water and formula and units in olive oil and orange juice and ounces and ferena and bath thermometers and blue-and-white striped nurses who view grandmothers with a coldly disapproving and pitying eyes she watched the bathing process for the first time with wonder as frank as it was unfeigned and i thought i was a modern woman she marveled

when i used to bathe jock i tested the temperature of the water with my elbow and i know my mother used to test my bath water when i was a baby by putting me into it she used to say that if i turned blue she knew the water was too cold and if i turned red she knew it was too hot hnorted the blue-and-white-stripped nurse and rightly oh i don't say that your method isn't the proper one emma hastened to say humbly and watched grace scrutinized the bath thermometer with critical eye in the days that followed there came calling the mothers of grace's young woman friends as jock had predicted charming elderly women most of them all of them gracious and friendly with that generous friendliness which is of the west but each fell into one of two classes the placid black silk rather vague woman of middle age whose face has the blank look of the sheltered woman and who wrinkles early from sheer lack of sufficient activity or of vital interest in life and the wiry well-dressed assertive type who talked about her club work and her charities her voice always taking the rising inflection at the end of a sentence as though addressing a meeting. When they met Emma, it was always with a little startled look of surprise, followed by something that bordered on disapproval, Emma the keenly observant, watching them felt vaguely uncomfortable. She tried to be politely interested in what they had to say,

but she found her thoughts straying a thousand miles away to the man whom she loved and who loved her, to the big busy factory with its humming machinery and its capable office staff, to the tasteful, comfortable, spacious home that she had helped to plan, to all the vital, absorbing, fascinating, and constructive interests with which her busy New York life was filled to overflowing. So she looked smilingly at the plump gray-haired ladies who came a calling in their smart black with the softening lace effect at the throat. and they looked smiling politely too at this slim erect pink-cheeked bright-eyed woman with the shining golden hair and the firm smooth skin and the alert manner and in their eyes was that distrust which lurks in the eyes of a woman as she looks at another woman of her own age who doesn't show it

in the weeks of her stay emma managed little by little to take the place of second mother in the household she had tact and finesse and cleverless enough even for that herculean feet grace's pale cheeks and last year's wardrobe made her firm in her stand grace she said one day listen to me i want you to get some clothes a lot of them and foolish ones all of them babies are all very well, but husbands have some slight right to consideration. The clock, for you, is an instrument devised to cut up the day and night into your baby's eating and sleeping periods. I want you to get some floppy hats with roses on them, and dresses with ruffles and sashes, I'll stay home and guard your child from vandals and ogres, scat. Her stay listened to four weeks, five weeks, six, she had the satisfaction of seeing the roses blooming in Grace's cheeks as well as in her hats. She learned to efface her own personality that others might shine

who had a better right, and she lost some of her own bright color, a measure of her own buoyancy. In the sixth week she saw in her mirror something that caused her to lean forward to stare for one intent moment, then to shrink back wide-eyed, a little sunburst, hair fine but undeniable, was etched delicately about the corners of her eyes. Fifteen minutes later, she had wired New York thus. Home Friday, do you still love me? Emma. When she left, little Emma McChesney was sleeping, by a curious coincidence, as she had been when Emma arrived, so that she could not have the satisfaction of a last pressure of the lips against the rose-pedal cheek she had to content herself with listening close to the door in the vain hope of catching a last sound of the child's breathing she was laden with fruits and flowers and magazines on her departure as she had been when she left new york but somehow these things did not seem to interest her

After the train had left Chicago's smoky buildings far behind, she sat very still for a long time, her eyes shut. She told herself that she felt and looked very old, very tired, very unlike the Emma McChesney Buck who had left New York a few weeks before. Then she thought of T.A. and her eyes unclosed, and she smiled. By the time the train had reached Cleveland, the little lines seemed miraculously to have disappeared somehow from about her eyes. When they left the 125th Street Station, she was a creature transformed. And when the train rolled into the great downtown shed, Emma was herself again, bright-eyed, alert, vibrating energy.

There was no searching, no hesitation. eyes met his, and his eyes found hers with a quite natural magnetism. Oh, T.A., my dear, my dear, I didn't know you were so handsome. And how beautiful New York is! Tell me, have I grown old? Have I? T.A. bundled her into a taxi, and gazed at her in some alarm. You? Old? What put that nonsense into your head? You're tired, dear. We'll go home. We'll go home. We'll go home. You're and you have a good rest and a quiet evening. Rest, echoed Emma, and sat up very straight.

Her cheeks pink, quiet evening. T.A. Buck, listen to me. I've had nothing but rest and quiet evenings for six weeks. I feel a million years old. One more day of being a grandmother, and I should have died. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to stop it. Fifth Avenue this minute, and buy a hat that's a thousand times too young for me, and you're

going with me to tell me that it isn't. And then you'll take me somewhere to dinner, a place with music and pink shades, and then I want to see a wicked play, preferably with a runway through the center aisle for the chorus. And then I want to go somewhere and dance. Get that, dear, dance. Tell me, T.A. Tell me the truth. Do you think I'm old and faded and wistful and grandmotherly?" "'I think,' said T. A. Buck, "'that you're the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most adorable woman in the world, and the more foolish your new hat is and the later we dance, the better I'll like it.

It has been awful without you, Emma.' Emma closed her eyes, and there came from the depths of her heart a great sigh of relief and comfort and gratification. O.T.A. my dear. It's all very well to drown your identity in the music of the orchestra, but there's nothing equal to the soul-filling satisfaction that you get in solo work. End of Chapter 7. End of Emma McChesney and Company by Edna Ferber.