Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
And you'll oblige me by putting the stopper on any conversation that may occur to you between here and the hotel. I've talked until I'm so low on words that I'll probably have to sell featherlooms in sign language to-morrow." They walked to the very doors of the Berger House in silence. But at the foot of the stairs that led to the parlor floor he stopped, and looked into Emma McChesney's face.
As she approached her own deck chair again she risked a bright, "Good morning." "You speak English!" Emma McChesney's tone expressed flattery and surprise. "Ah, yes, it is necessary. There are many English in Argentina." A sigh a fluttering, tremulous sigh of perfect peace and happiness welled up from Emma McChesney's heart and escaped through her smiling lips.
"Of course, in our talk last night, we didn't cover the South American situation thoroughly. But your letters and the orders told the story. You carried the thing through to success. It's marvelous! But we stay-at-homes haven't been marking time during your absence." The puzzled frown still sat on Emma McChesney's brow. As though thinking aloud, she said,
Emma McChesney's eyes those eyes that had seen so much of the world and its ways, and that still could return your gaze so clearly and honestly widened until they looked so much like those of a hurt child, or a dumb animal that has received a death wound, that young T. A. dropped his gaze in confusion. Emma McChesney stood up. Her breath came a little quickly.
And watching it climb and take hold there came back to Emma McChesney's eye the old sparkle, to her step the old buoyancy, to her voice the old delightful ring. And now, when T.A. Buck strolled into her office of a morning, with his, "It's taking hold, Mrs. Mack," she would dimple like a girl as she laughed back at him "With a grip that won't let go."
After dinner, in the cool of the sitting-room, with the shades drawn, and their skirts tucked halfway to their knees, things looked propitious for that first stroke in the plan which had worked itself out in Emma McChesney's alert mind. She caught Blanche LeHaye's eye, and smiled. "This beats burlesquing, doesn't it?" she said. She leaned forward a bit in her chair.
When the office machinery needed mental oiling, when a new hand demanded to be put on silk-work instead of mercerized, when a consignment of skirt-material turned out to be more than usually metallic, it was in Mrs. Emma McChesney's little private office that the tangle was unsnarled. She walked into that little office, now, at nine o'clock of a brilliant September morning.
And if any human face, in the space of seventeen seconds, could be capable of expressing relief, and regret, and alarm, and dismay, and tenderness, and wonder, and a great womanly sympathy, Emma McChesney's countenance might be said to have expressed all those emotions and more. The last two were uppermost as she slowly came toward him.
The wives came, obediently, but with suspicion and distrust in their eyes, and remained to pat Emma McChesney's arm, ask to read aloud to her, and to indulge generally in that process known as "cheering her up." Every traveling man who stopped at the little hotel on his way to Minneapolis added to the heaped-up offerings at Emma McChesney's shrine.
Emma McChesney looked straight at him and tried in vain to remember ever having heard of the South American's sense of humor. A moment passed. Her heart sank. "Ah, you Northerners! You are too quick for us. Come; I myself must see this garment which you honor by selling." His glance rested approvingly on Emma McChesney's trim, smart figure. "That which you sell, it must be quite right."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking