“Call 'em anything your little heart dictates, but listen. Fromkin knows all about you. Knows you've got a million friends in the trade, that you know skirts from the belt to the hem. I don't know just what his proposition is, but I'll bet he'll give you half interest in the livest, come-upest little skirt factory in the country, just for a few thousands capital, maybe, and your business head at the executive end. Now just let that sink in before you speak.”
“And why,” inquired Emma McChesney, “don't you grab this matchless business opportunity yourself?”
“Because, fair lady, Fromkin wouldn't let me get in with a crowbar. He'll never be able to pronounce his t's right, and when he's dressed up he looks like a 'bus-boy at Mouquin's, but he can see a bluff farther than I can throw one—and that's somewhere beyond the horizon, as you'll admit. Talk it over with us after dinner then?”
Emma McChesney was regarding the plump, pink, eager face before her with keen, level, searching eyes.
“Yes,” she said slowly, “I will.”
“Cafe? We'll have a bottle—”
“No.”
“Oh! Er—parlor?”
Mrs. McChesney smiled. “I won't ask you to make yourself that miserable. You can't smoke in the parlor. We'll find a quiet corner in the writing-room, where you men can light up. I don't want to take advantage of you.”
{Illustration: “'Not that you look your age—not by ten years!'”}