"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 forty-eight 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 stock-room, 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 in a business argument.
T. A. Buck canceled his order at the tailor's, 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.