"Stop it! You make me feel like Rheims 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 Berg 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 hit 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 vinegary, narrow life, that girl has never had a beau, much less——"
Buck's eyebrows came up slightly.
"Emma McChesney, you haven't developed—er—claws, 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—they're all like this?"