Ed Meyers shifted around in his chair so that he might better stare at this new foe in the field. His little red mouth was open ludicrously.
"Who"re you out for?" he demanded next.
There was a look of Emma McChesney on Jock"s face. "Why--er--the Union Underskirt and Hosiery Company of Chicago. New concern."
"Must be," ruminated Ed Meyers. "I never heard of "em, and I know "em all. You"re starting in young, ain"t you, kid! Well, it"ll never hurt you. You"ll learn something new every day. Now me, I--"
In breezed Emma McChesney. Her quick glance rested immediately upon Meyers and the boy. And in that moment some instinct prompted Jock McChesney to shake his head, ever so slightly, and a.s.sume a blankness of expression. And Emma McChesney, with that shrewdness which had made her one of the best salesmen on the road, saw, and miraculously understood.
"How do, Mrs. McChesney," grinned Fat Ed Meyers. "You see I beat you to it."
"So I see," smiled Emma, cheerfully. "I was delayed. Just sold a nice little bill to Watkins down the Street." She seated herself across the way, and kept her eyes on that closed door.
"Say, kid," Meyers began, in the husky whisper of the fat man, "I"m going to put you wise to something, seeing you"re new to this game.
See that lady over there?" He nodded discreetly in Emma McChesney"s direction.
"Pretty, isn"t she?" said Jock, appreciatively.
"Know who she is?"
"Well--I--she does look familiar but--"
"Oh, come now, quit your bluffing. If you"d ever met that dame you"d remember it. Her name"s McChesney--Emma McChesney, and she sells T. A.
Buck"s Featherloom Petticoats. I"ll give her her dues; she"s the best little salesman on the road. I"ll bet that girl could sell a ruffled, accordion-plaited underskirt to a fat woman who was trying to reduce.
She"s got the darndest way with her. And at that she"s straight, too."
If Ed Meyers had not been gazing so intently into his hat, trying at the same time to look cherubically benign he might have seen a quick and painful scarlet sweep the face of the boy, coupled with a certain tense look of the muscles around the jaw.
"Well, now, look here," he went on, still in a whisper. "We"re both skirt men, you and me. Everything"s fair in this game. Maybe you don"t know it, but when there"s a bunch of the boys waiting around to see the head of the store like this, and there happens to be a lady traveler in the crowd, why, it"s considered kind of a professional courtesy to let the lady have the first look-in. See? It ain"t so often that three people in the same line get together like this. She knows it, and she"s sitting on the edge of her chair, waiting to bolt when that door opens, even if she does act like she was hanging on the words of that lady clerk there. The minute it does open a crack she"ll jump up and give me a fleeting, grateful smile, and sail in and cop a fat order away from the old man and his skirt buyer. I"m wise. Say, he may be an oyster, but he knows a pretty woman when he sees one. By the time she"s through with him he"ll have enough petticoats on hand to last him from now until Turkey goes suffrage. Get me?"
"I get you," answered Jock.
"I say, this is business, and good manners be hanged. When a woman breaks into a man"s game like this, let her take her chances like a man. Ain"t that straight?"
"You"ve said something," agreed Jock.
"Now, look here, kid. When that door opens I get up. See? And shoot straight for the old man"s office. See? Like a duck. See? Say, I may be fat, kid, but I"m what they call light on my feet, and when I see an order getting away from me I can be so fleet that I have Diana looking like old Weston doing a stretch of muddy country road in a coast to coast hike. See? Now you help me out on this and I"ll see that you don"t suffer for it. I"ll stick in a good word for you, believe me. You take the word of an old stager like me and you won"t go far--"
The door opened. Simultaneously three figures sprang into action. Jock had the seat nearest the door. With marvelous clumsiness he managed to place himself in Ed Meyers" path, then reddened, began an apology, stepped on both of Ed"s feet, jabbed his elbow into his stomach, and dropped his hat. A second later the door of old Sulzberg"s private office closed upon Emma McChesney"s smart, erect, confident figure.
Now, Ed Meyers" hands were peculiar hands for a fat man. They were tapering, slender, delicate, blue-veined, temperamental hands. At this moment, despite his purpling face, and his staring eyes, they were the most noticeable thing about him. His fingers clawed the empty air, quivering, vibrant, as though poised to clutch at Jock"s throat.
Then words came. They spluttered from his lips. They popped like corn kernels in the heat of his wrath; they tripped over each other; they exploded.
"You darned kid, you!" he began, with fascinating fluency. "You thousand-legged, double-jointed, ox-footed truck horse. Come on out of here and I"ll lick the shine off your shoes, you blue-eyed babe, you!
What did you get up for, huh? What did you think this was going to be --a flag drill?"
With a whoop of pure joy Jock McChesney turned and fled.
They dined together at one o"clock, Emma McChesney and her son Jock.
Suddenly Jock stopped eating. His eyes were on the door. "There"s that fathead now," he said, excitedly. "The nerve of him! He"s coming over here."
Ed Meyers was waddling toward them with the quick light step of the fat man. His pink, full-jowled face was glowing. His eyes were bright as a boy"s. He stopped at their table and paused for one dramatic moment.
"So, me beauty, you two were in cahoots, huh? That"s the second low- down deal you"ve handed me. I haven"t forgotten that trick you turned with Nussbaum at DeKalb. Never mind, little girl. I"ll get back at you yet."
He nodded a contemptuous head in Jock"s direction. "Carrying a packer?"
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""Come on out of here, and I"ll lick the shine off your shoes, you blue-eyed babe, you!""]
Emma McChesney wiped her fingers daintily on her napkin, crushed it on the table, and leaned back in her chair. "Men," she observed, wonderingly, "are the cussedest creatures. This chap occupied the same room with you last night and you don"t even know his name. Funny! If two strange women had found themselves occupying the same room for a night they wouldn"t have got to the kimono and back hair stage before they would not only have known each other"s name, but they"d have tried on each other"s hats, swapped corset cover patterns, found mutual friends living in Dayton, Ohio, taught each other a new Irish crochet st.i.tch, showed their family photographs, told how their married sister"s little girl nearly died with swollen glands, and divided off the mirror into two sections to paste their newly washed handkerchiefs on. Don"t tell _me_ men have a genius for friendship."
"Well, who is he?" insisted Ed Meyers. "He told me everything but his name this morning. I wish I had throttled him with a bunch of Bisons"
badges last night."
"His name," smiled Emma McChesney, "is Jock McChesney. He"s my one and only son, and he"s put through his first little business deal this morning just to show his mother that he can be a help to his folks if he wants to. Now, Ed Meyers, if you"re going to have apoplexy don"t you go and have it around this table. My boy is only on his second piece of pie, and I won"t have his appet.i.te spoiled."
V
PINK TIGHTS AND GINGHAMS
Some one--probably one of those Frenchmen whose life job it was to make epigrams---once said that there are but two kinds of women: good women, and bad women. Ever since then problem playwrights have been putting that fiction into the mouths of wronged husbands and building their "big scene" around it. But don"t you believe it. There are four kinds: good women, bad women, good bad women, and bad good women. And the worst of these is the last. This should be a story of all four kinds, and when it is finished I defy you to discover which is which.
When the red stuff in the thermometer waxes ambitious, so that fat men stand, bulging-eyed, before it and beginning with the ninety mark count up with a horrible satisfaction--ninety-one--ninety-two--ninety- three--NINETY FOUR! by gosh! and the cinders are filtering into your berth, and even the porter is wandering restlessly up and down the aisle like a black soul in purgatory and a white duck coat, then the thing to do is to don those mercifully few garments which the laxity of sleeping-car etiquette permits, slip out between the green curtains and fare forth in search of draughts, liquid and atmospheric.
At midnight Emma McChesney, inured as she was to sleepers and all their horrors, found her lower eight unbearable. With the bravery of desperation she groped about for her cinder-strewn belongings, donned slippers and kimono, waited until the tortured porter"s footsteps had squeaked their way to the far end of the car, then sped up the dim aisle toward the back platform. She wrenched open the door, felt the rush of air, drew in a long, grateful, smoke-steam-dust laden lungful of it, felt the breath of it on spine and chest, sneezed, realized that she would be the victim of a summer cold next day, and, knowing, cared not.
"Great, ain"t it?" said a voice in the darkness. (Nay, reader. A woman"s voice.)
Emma McChesney was of the non-screaming type. But something inside of her suspended action for the fraction of a second. She peered into the darkness.
""J" get scared?" inquired the voice. Its owner lurched forward from the corner in which she had been crouching, into the half-light cast by the vestibule night-globe.
Even as men judge one another by a Masonic emblem, an Elk pin, or the band of a cigar, so do women in sleeping-cars weigh each other according to the rules of the Ancient Order of the Kimono. Seven seconds after Emma McChesney first beheld the negligee that stood revealed in the dim light she had its wearer neatly weighed, marked, listed, docketed and placed.
It was the kind of kimono that is a.s.sociated with straw-colored hair, and French-heeled shoes, and over-fed dogs at the end of a leash. The j.a.panese are wrongly accused of having perpetrated it. In pattern it showed bright green flowers-that-never-were sprawling on a purple background. A diamond bar fastened it not too near the throat.
It was one of Emma McChesney"s boasts that she was the only living woman who could get off a sleeper at Bay City, Michigan, at 5 A.M., without looking like a Swedish immigrant just dumped at Ellis Island.
Traveling had become a science with her, as witness her serviceable dark-blue silk kimono, and her hair in a schoolgirl braid down her back. The blonde woman cast upon Emma McChesney an admiring eye.
"Gawd, ain"t it hot!" she said, sociably.
"I wonder," mused Emma McChesney, "if that porter could be hypnotized into making some lemonade--a pitcherful, with a lot of ice in it, and the cold sweat breaking out all over the gla.s.s?
"Lemonade!" echoed the other, wonder and amus.e.m.e.nt in her tone. "Are they still usin" it?" She leaned against the door, swaying with the motion of the car, and hugging her. plump, bare arms. "Travelin"