“My cue,” said Emma McChesney, with a weary brightness, “to say, 'Let me pass, sir!'”
“Please don't,” pleaded T. A. Junior. “I'll remember this the rest of my life. I thought I was a statue of modern business methods, but after to-day I'm going to ask the office boy to help me run this thing. If I could only think of some special way to apologize to you—”
“Oh, it's all right,” said Emma McChesney indifferently.
“But it isn't! It isn't! You don't understand. That human jellyfish of a Meyers said some things, and I thought I'd be clever and prove them. I can't ask your pardon. There aren't words enough in the language. Why, you're the finest little woman—you're—you'd restore the faith of a cynic who had chronic indigestion. I wish I—Say, let me relieve you of a couple of those small towns that you hate to make, and give you Cleveland and Cincinnati. And let me—Why say, Mrs. McChesney! Please! Don't! This isn't the time to—”
“I can't help it,” sobbed Emma McChesney, her two hands before her face. “I'll stop in a minute. There; I'm stopping now. For Heaven's sake, stop patting me on the head!”
“Please don't be so decent to me,” entreated T. A. Junior, his fine eyes more luminous than ever. “If only you'd try to get back at me I wouldn't feel so cut up about it.” Emma McChesney looked up at him, a smile shining radiantly through the tears. “Very well. I'll do it. Just before I came in they showed me that new embroidery flounced model you just designed. Maybe you don't know it, but women wear only one limp petticoat nowadays. And buttoned shoes. The eyelets in that embroidery are just big enough to catch on the top button of a woman's shoe, and tear, and trip her. I ought to have let you make up a couple of million of them, and then watch them come back on your hands. I was going to tell you, anyway, for T. A. Senior's sake. Now I'm doing it for your own.”
{Illustration: “And found himself addressing the backs of the letters on the door marked 'Private'”}
“For—” began T. A. Junior excitedly. And found himself addressing the backs of the letters on the door marked “Private,” as it slammed after the trim, erect figure in blue.