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Polly Ann and I went up the next day, and brought the rest of the buck merrily homeward. After that I became the hunter of the family; but oftener than not I returned tired and empty-handed, and ravenously hungry. Indeed, our chief game was rattlesnakes, which we killed by the dozens in the corn and truck patches. As Polly Ann and I went about our daily chores, we would talk of Tom McChesney.
"Start out with a feature skirt. Might illustrate with one of those freak drawings they're crazy about now slinky figure, you know, hollow-chested, one foot trailing, and all that. They're crazy, but they do attract attention, no doubt of that." Bartholomew Berg turned his head slowly. "What's your opinion, Mrs. McChesney?" he asked. "I I'm afraid I haven't any," said Emma McChesney listlessly.
Just how fully those five months of small-town existence had got on her nerves Emma McChesney did not realize until the train snorted into the shed and she sniffed the mingled smell of smoke and stockyards and found it sweet in her nostrils. An unholy joy seized her. She entered the Biggest Store and made for the millinery department, yielding to an uncontrollable desire to buy a hat.
Get the tango on its native tairn' or words to that effect." "Emma, use a little logic and common sense!" There was a note in Buck's voice that brought a quick response from Mrs. McChesney. She dropped her little air of gayety. The pain in his voice, and the hurt in his eyes, and the pleading in his whole attitude banished the smile from her face. It had not been much of a smile, anyway.
Do I! Why, child, it's distinctive!" Miss Sweeney, still standing, smiled a pleased but rather preoccupied smile. Her eyes roved toward the door. Emma McChesney, radiating good will and energy, went on: "Wait till you see our new samples! You'll buy a million dollars' worth. Just let me lead you to our new Walk-Easy bifurcated skirt.
"It looks very much as though we were going to be millionaires in our old age, you and I?" went on Buck. Emma McChesney opened her eyes wide. "Old!" she mocked, "Old! You! I! Ha!" They used to do it much more picturesquely. They rode in coats of scarlet, in the crisp, clear morning, to the winding of horns and the baying of hounds, to the thud-thud of hoofs, and the crackle of underbrush.
There stood Polly Ann, as white now as the bleached linen she wore, and Tom McChesney, tall and spare and broad, as strong a figure of a man as ever I laid eyes on. God had truly made that couple for wedlock in His leafy temple. The deep-toned words of the preacher in prayer broke the stillness. They were made man and wife.
The one headed 'Are Skirts Growing Fuller, and Where?" "Do I remember it!" wailed Emma McChesney. "And can I ever forget the money we put into that fringed model we called the Carmencita! We made it up so it could retail for a dollar ninety-five, and I could have sworn that the women would maim each other to get to it. But it didn't go. They won't even wear fringe around their ankles."
But most absorbing of all to Emma McChesney, watching quietly over her book or magazine, was a tall, erect, white-bearded Argentine who, with his family, occupied chairs near hers. His name had struck her with the sound of familiarity when she read it on the passenger list. She had asked the deck-steward to point out the name's owner. P " Suddenly she knew.
Emma McChesney had been working in bunches of six. Thus, from twelve to one she had dictated six letters, looked up memoranda, passed on samples of petticoat silk, fired the office-boy, wired Spalding out in Nebraska, and eaten her lunch. Emma McChesney was engaged in that nerve-racking process known as getting things out of the way.
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