"But it is! It—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 Stotz-Singer & 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 Hortense, 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-light through the fog, I'm there with the spy-glass."
If Emma McChesney held herself well in leash during the busy day, she relished her happiness none the less when she could allow herself the full savor of it. When a girl of eighteen she had married a man of the sort that must put whisky 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 triumphantly, sweet and unsullied, and she had succeeded in bringing her son, Jock McChesney, out into the clear sunlight with her.
The evenings spent with T. A. Buck, the man of fine instincts, of breeding, of proven worth, of rare tenderness, filled her with a great peace and happiness. When doubts assailed her, it was not for herself but for him. Sometimes the fear would clutch 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—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 eighteen. 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. But it put me out of the class of that girl you see on——"