"Oh," said Emma McChesney. The smile was still there, but the radiance was gone.
She seated herself at her desk. Buck took the chair near by. She unlocked a drawer, opened it, rummaged, closed it again, unlocked another. She patted the flat top of her desk with loving fingers.
"I can"t help it," she said, with a little shamed laugh; "I"m so glad to be back. I"ll probably hug the forewoman and bite a piece out of the first Featherloom I lay hands on. I had to use all my self-control to keep from kissing Jake, the elevator-man, coming up."
Out of the corner of her eye, Emma McChesney had been glancing at her handsome business partner. She had found herself doing the same thing from the time he had met her at the dock late in the afternoon of the day before. Those four months had wrought some subtle change. But what? Where? She frowned a moment in thought.
Then:
"Is that a new suit, T. A.?"
"This? Lord, no! Last summer"s. Put it on because of this July hangover in September. Why?"
"Oh, I don"t know"--vaguely--"I just--wondered."
There was nothing vague about T. A. Buck, however. His old air of leisureliness was gone. His very att.i.tude as he sat there, erect, brisk, confident, was in direct contrast to his old, graceful indolence.
"I"d like to go over the home grounds with you this morning," he said.
"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,
"Have you grown thinner, or fatter or--something?"
"Not an ounce. Weighed at the club yesterday."
He leaned forward a little, his face suddenly very sober.
"Emma, I want to tell you now that--that mother--she--I lost her just a few weeks after you sailed."
Emma McChesney gave a little cry. She came quickly over to him, and one hand went to his shoulder as she stood looking down at him, her face all sympathy and contrition and sorrow.
"And you didn"t write me! You didn"t even tell me, last night!"
"I didn"t want to distress you. I knew you were having a hard-enough pull down there without additional worries. It happened very suddenly while I was out on the road. I got the wire in Peoria. She died very suddenly and quite painlessly. Her companion, Miss Tate, was with her.
She had never been herself since Dad"s death."
"And you----"
"I could only do what was to be done. Then I went back on the road. I closed up the house, and now I"ve leased it. Of course it"s big enough for a regiment. But we stayed on because mother was used to it. I sold some of the furniture, but stored the things she had loved. She left some to you."
"To me!"
"You know she used to enjoy your visits so much, partly because of the way in which you always talked of Dad. She left you some jewelry that she was fond of, and that colossal old mahogany buffet that you used to rave over whenever you came up. Heaven knows what you"ll do with it!
It"s a white elephant. If you add another story to it, you could rent it out as an apartment."
"Indeed I shall take it, and cherish it, and polish it up myself every week--the beauty!"
She came back to her chair. They sat a moment in silence. Then Emma McChesney spoke musingly.
"So that was it." Buck looked up. "I sensed something--different. I didn"t know. I couldn"t explain it."
Buck pa.s.sed a quick hand over his eyes, shook himself, sat up, erect and brisk again, and plunged, with a directness that was as startling as it was new in him, into the details of Middle Western business.
"Good!" exclaimed Emma McChesney.
"It"s all very well to know that Featherlooms are safe in South America. But the important thing is to know how they"re going in the corn country."
Buck stood up.
"Suppose we transfer this talk to my office. All the papers are there, all the correspondence--all the orders, everything. You can get the whole situation in half an hour. What"s the use of talking when figures will tell you."
He walked swiftly over to the door and stood there waiting. Emma McChesney rose. The puzzled look was there again.
"No, that wasn"t it, after all," she said.
"Eh?" said Buck. "Wasn"t what?"
"Nothing," replied Emma McChesney.
"I"m wool-gathering this morning. I"m afraid it"s going to take me a day or two to get back into harness again."
"If you"d rather wait, if you think you"ll be more fit to-morrow or the day after, we"ll wait. There"s no real hurry. I just thought----"
But Mrs. McChesney led the way across the hall that separated her office from her partner"s. Halfway across, she stopped and surveyed the big, bright, busy main office, with its clacking typewriters and rustle and crackle of papers and its air of concentration.
"Why, you"ve run up a part.i.tion there between Miss Casey"s desk and the workroom door, haven"t you?"
"Yes; it"s much better that way."
"Yes, of course. And--why, where are the boys" desks? Spalding"s and Hutchinson"s, and--they"re all gone!" She turned in amazement.
"Break it to me! Aren"t we using traveling men any more?"
Buck laughed his low, pleasant laugh.
"Oh, yes; but I thought their desks belonged somewhere else than in the main office. They"re now installed in the little room between the shop and Healy"s office. Close quarters, but better than having them out here where they were inclined to neglect their reports in order to shine in the eyes of that pretty new stenographer. There are one or two other changes. I hope you"ll approve of them."
"I"m sure I shall," replied Emma McChesney, a little stiffly.
In Buck"s office, she settled back in her chair to watch him as he arranged neat sheaves of papers for her inspection. Her eyes traveled from his keen, eager face to the piles of paper and back again.
"Tell me, did you hit it off with the Ella Sweeneys and the Sadie Harrises of the great Middle West? Is business as bad as the howlers say it is? You said something last night about a novelty bifurcated skirt. Was that the new designer"s idea? How have the early buyers taken to it?"
Buck crooked an elbow over his head in self-defense.
"Stop it! You make me feel like Rheims cathedral. Don"t bombard until negotiations fail."