"Speak English," she said, and went on unpacking.
"INGLES!" shouted the official. "No!" Then, with a superhuman effort, as Emma McChesney stood up, her arms laden with Featherloom samples of rainbow hues, "PARE! Ar-r-r-rest!"
Mrs. McChesney slammed down the trunk top, locked it, clutched her samples firmly, and faced the enraged official.
"Go 'way! 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, mustachios 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 none 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 voluble interpreter. She remained coolly unruffled by the fusillade of Portuguese. Quietly she opened her hand bag 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 Senor Pages. He stood at the rail surveying Rio's shores with that lip-curling contempt of the Argentine for everything Brazilian. He regarded Emma McChesney's radiant face.
"You are pleased with this—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!"