"Brown? So's mine! Good heavens, T. A., we'll look like a minstrel troupe!"
Buck sighed resignedly.
"If I telephone my tailor that I can't make it until four-thirty, 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 had claimed to be.
During working hours, Mrs. McChesney 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—ahem!—I have here a letter from Singer & French, Columbus, Ohio. They ask for an extension. They've had ninety 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."
"H'm; yes." A silence. "Emma, that's a fiendishly becoming gown."
"Now, T. A.!"