Mrs. McChesney closed the glass door of the case with a bang.
“No, thanks. My office at 9:30.”
T. A. Buck followed her to the door. “But why not lunch? You never will take lunch with me. Ever so much more comfortable to talk things over that way—”
“When I talk business,” said Emma McChesney, pausing at the threshold, “I want to be surrounded by a business atmosphere. I want the scene all set—one practical desk, two practical chairs, one telephone, one letter-basket, one self-filling fountain-pen, et cetera. And when I lunch I want to lunch, with nothing weightier on my mind than the question as to whether I'll have chicken livers saute or creamed sweetbreads with mushrooms.”
“That's no reason,” grumbled T. A. “That's an excuse.”
“It will have to do, though,” replied Mrs. McChesney abruptly, and passed out as he held the door open for her. He was still standing in the doorway after her trim, erect figure had disappeared into the little office across the hail.
The little scarlet leather clock on Emma McChesney's desk pointed to 9:29 A.M. when there entered her office an immaculately garbed, miraculously shaven, healthily rosy youngish-middle-aged man who looked ten years younger than the harassed, frowning T. A. Buck with whom she had almost quarreled the evening before. Mrs. McChesney was busily dictating to a sleek little stenographer. The sleek little stenographer glanced up at T. A. Buck's entrance. The glance, being a feminine one, embraced all of T. A.'s good points and approved them from the tips of his modish boots to the crown of his slightly bald head, and including the creamy-white flower that reposed in his buttonhole.
“'Morning!” said Emma McChesney, looking up briefly. “Be with you in a minute.... and in reply would say we regret that you have had trouble with No. 339. It is impossible to avoid pulling at the seams in the lower-grade silk skirts when they are made up in the present scant style. Our Mr. Spalding warned you of this at the time of your purchase. We will not under any circumstances consent to receive the goods if they are sent back on our hands. Yours sincerely. That'll be all, Miss Casey.”
She swung around to face her visitor as the door closed. If T. A. Buck looked ten years younger than he had the afternoon before, Emma McChesney undoubtedly looked five years older. There were little, worried, sagging lines about her eyes and mouth.
T. A. Buck's eyes had followed the sheaf of signed correspondence, and the well-filled pad of more recent dictation which the sleek little stenographer had carried away with her.