“Sables and sealskin,” repeated T. A. Buck, his voice vibrant. “If it's those you want, you can—”
Snap! went the electric switch under Emma McChesney's fingers. It was as decisive as a blow in the face. She walked to the door. The little room was dim.
“I'm sending my boy through college with my sealskin-and-sable fund,” she said crisply; “and I'm to meet him at 4:30.”
“Oh, that's your appointment!” Relief was evident in T. A. Buck's tone.
Emma McChesney shook a despairing head. “For impudent and unquenchable inquisitiveness commend me to a man! Here! If you must know, though I intended it as a surprise when it was finished and furnished—I'm going to rent a flat, a regular six-room, plenty-of-closets flat, after ten years of miserable hotel existence. Jock's running over for two days to approve it. I ought to have waited until the holidays, so he wouldn't miss classes; but I couldn't bear to. I've spent ten Thanksgivings, and ten Christmases, and ten New Years in hotels. Hell has no terrors for me.”
They were walking down the corridor together.
“Take me along—please!” pleaded T. A. Buck, like a boy. “I know all about flats, and gas-stoves, and meters, and plumbing, and everything!”
“You!” scoffed Emma McChesney, “with your five-story house and your summer home in the mountains!”
“Mother won't hear of giving up the house. I hate it myself. Bathrooms in those darned old barracks are so cold that a hot tub is an icy plunge before you get to it.” They had reached the elevator. A stubborn look appeared about T. A. Buck's jaw. “I'm going!” he announced, and scudded down the hail to his office door. Emma McChesney pressed the elevator-button. Before the ascending car showed a glow of light in the shaft T. A. Buck appeared with hat, gloves, stick.
“I think the car's downstairs. We'll run up in it. What's the address? Seventies, I suppose?”