They had always had two morning papers--he his, she hers. The _Times_.
Both. Nothing could illustrate more clearly the plan on which Mr. and
Mrs. T.A. Buck conducted their married life. Theirs was the morning calm
and harmony which comes to two people who are free to digest breakfast
and the First Page simultaneously with no--"Just let me see the inside
sheet, will you, dear?" to mar the day's beginning.
In the days when she had been Mrs. Emma McChesney, travelling saleswoman
for the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, New York, her perusal
of the morning's news had been, perforce, a hasty process, accomplished
between trains, or in a small-town hotel 'bus, jolting its way to the
depot for the 7.52; or over an American-plan breakfast throughout which
seven eighths of her mind was intent on the purchasing possibilities of
a prospective nine o'clock skirt buyer. There was no need now of haste,
but the habit of years still clung. From eight-thirty to eight
thirty-five A.M. Emma McChesney Buck was always in partial eclipse
behind the billowing pages of her newspaper. Only the tip of her topmost
coil of bright hair was visible. She read swiftly, darting from war news
to health hints, from stock market to sport page, and finding something
of interest in each. For her there was nothing cryptic in a headline
such as "Rudie Slams One Home"; and Do pfd followed by dotted lines and
vulgar fractions were to her as easily translated as the Daily Hint From
Paris. Hers was the photographic eye and the alert brain that can film a
column or a page at a glance.
Across the table her husband sat turned slightly sidewise in his chair,
his paper folded in a tidy oblong. He read down one column, top of the
next and down that, seriously and methodically; giving to toast or
coffee-cup the single-handed and groping attention of one whose interest
is elsewhere. The light from the big bay window fell on the printed page
and cameoed his profile. After three years of daily contact with it,
Emma still caught herself occasionally gazing with appreciation at that
clear-cut profile and the clean, shining line of his hair as it grew
away from the temple.
"T.A.," she had announced one morning, to his mystification, "you're the
Francis X. Bushman of the breakfast table. I believe you sit that way
purposely."
"Francis X--?" He was not a follower of the films.
Emma elucidated. "Discoverer and world's champion exponent of the side
face."
"I might punish you, Emma, by making a pun about its all being Greek to
me, but I shan't." He returned to Page Two, Column Four.
Usually their conversation was comfortably monosyllabic and disjointed,
as is the breakfast talk of two people who understand each other.
Amicable silence was the rule, broken only by the rustle of paper, the
clink of china, an occasional, "Toast, dear?" And when Buck, in a low,
vibrating tone (slightly muffled by buttered corn muffin) said, "Dogs!"
Emma knew he was pursuing the daily _schrecklichkeit_.
Upon this cozy scene Conservation cast his gaunt shadow. It was in June,
the year of America's Great Step, that Emma, examining her household,
pronounced it fattily degenerate, with complications, and performed upon
it a severe and skilful surgical operation. Among the rest:
"One morning paper ought to be enough for any husband and wife who
aren't living on a Boffin basis. There'll be one copy of the _Times_
delivered at this house in the future, Mr. Buck. We might match pennies
for it, mornings."
It lay there on the hall table that first morning, an innocent oblong,
its headlines staring up at them with inky eyes.
"Paper, T.A.," she said, and handed it to him.
"You take it, dear."
"Oh, no! No."
She poured the coffee, trying to keep her gaze away from the tantalizing
tail-end of the headline at whose first half she could only guess.
"By Jove, Emma! Listen to this! Pershing says if we have one m--"
"Stop right there! We've become pretty well acquainted in the last three
years, T.A. But if you haven't learned that if there's one thing I can't
endure, it's being fed across the table with scraps of the day's news, I
shall have to consider our marriage a failure."
"Oh, very well. I merely thought you'd be--"
"I am. But there's something about having it read to you--"
On the second morning Emma, hurriedly fastening the middle button of her
blouse on her way downstairs, collided with her husband, who was
shrugging himself into his coat. They continued their way downstairs
with considerable dignity and pronounced leisure. The paper lay on the
hall table. They reached for it. There was a moment--just the fraction
of a minute--when each clutched a corner of it, eying the other grimly.
Then both let go suddenly, as though the paper had burned their fingers.
They stared at each other, surprise and horror in their gaze. The paper
fell to the floor with a little slap. Both stooped for it,
apologetically. Their heads bumped. They staggered back, semi-stunned.
Emma found herself laughing, rather wildly. Buck joined in after a
moment--a rueful laugh. She was the first to recover.
"That settles it. I'm willing to eat trick bread and whale meat and
drink sugarless coffee, but I draw the line at hating my husband for the
price of a newspaper subscription. White paper may be scarce but so are
husbands. It's cheaper to get two newspapers than to set up two
establishments."
They were only two among many millions who, at that time, were playing
an amusing and fashionable game called Win the War. They did not realize
that the game was to develop into a grim and magnificently functioning
business to whose demands they would cheerfully sacrifice all that they
most treasured.
Of late, Emma had spent less and less time in the offices of the
Featherloom Company. For more than ten years that flourishing business,
and the career of her son, Jock McChesney, had been the twin orbits
about which her existence had revolved. But Jock McChesney was a man of
family now, with a wife, two babies, and an uncanny advertising sense
that threatened to put his name on the letterhead of the Raynor
Advertising Company of Chicago. As for the Featherloom factory--it
seemed to go of its own momentum. After her marriage to the firm's head,
Emma's interest in the business was unflagging.
"Now look here, Emma," Buck would say. "You've given enough to this
firm. Play a while. Cut up. Forget you're the 'And Company' in T.A. Buck
& Co."
"But I'm so used to it. I'd miss it so. You know what happened that
first year of our marriage when I tried to do the duchess. I don't know
how to loll. If you take Featherlooms away from me I'll degenerate into
a Madam Chairman. You'll see."
She might have, too, if the War had not come along and saved her.
By midsummer the workrooms were turning out strange garments, such as
gray and khaki flannel shirts, flannelette one-piece pajamas, and
woollen bloomers, all intended for the needs of women war workers going
abroad.
Emma had dropped into the workroom one day and had picked up a
half-finished gray flannel garment. She eyed it critically, her deft
fingers manipulating the neckband. A little frown gathered between her
eyes.
"Somehow a woman in a flannel shirt always looks as if she had quinsy.
It's the collar. They cut them like a man's small-size. But a woman's
neck is as different from a man's as her collarbone is."
She picked up a piece of flannel and smoothed it on the cutting-table.
The head designer had looked on in disapproval while her employer's wife
had experimented with scraps of cloth, and pins, and chalk, and
scissors. But Emma had gone on serenely cutting and snipping and
pinning. They made up samples of service shirts with the new
neck-hugging collar and submitted them to Miss Nevins, the head of the
woman's uniform department at Fyfe & Gordon's. That astute lady had been
obliged to listen to scores of canteeners, nurses, secretaries, and
motor leaguers who, standing before a long mirror in one of the many
fitting-rooms, had gazed, frowned, fumbled at collar and topmost button,
and said, "But it looks so--so lumpy around the neck."
Miss Kate Nevins's reply to this plaint was: "Oh, when you get your tie
on--"
"Perhaps they'll let me wear a turn-down collar."
"Absolutely against regulations. The rules strictly forbid anything but
the high, close-fitting collar."
The fair war worker would sigh, mutter something about supposing they'd
shoot you at sunrise for wearing a becoming shirt, and order six,
grumbling.
Kate Nevins had known Mrs. T.A. Buck in that lady's Emma McChesney days.
At the end of the first day's trial of the new Featherloom shirt she had
telephoned the Featherloom factory and had asked for Emma McChesney.
People who had known her by that name never seemed able to get the trick
of calling her by any other.
With every fitting-room in the Fyfe & Gordon establishment demanding her
attention, Miss Nevins's conversation was necessarily brief. "Emma
McChesney?... Kate Nevins.... Who's responsible for the collar on those
Featherloom shirts?... I was sure of it.... No regular designer could
cut a collar like that. Takes a genius.... H'm?... Well, I mean it. I'm
going to write to Washington and have 'em vote you a distinguished
service medal. This is the first day since last I-don't-know-when that
hasn't found me in the last stages of nervous exhaustion at six
o'clock.... All these women warriors are willing to bleed and die for
their country, but they want to do it in a collar that fits, and I don't
blame 'em. After I saw the pictures of that Russian Battalion of Death,
I understood why.... Yes, I know I oughtn't to say that, but...."
By autumn Emma was wearing one of those Featherloom service shirts
herself. It was inevitable that a woman of her executive ability,
initiative, and detail sense should be pressed into active service.
November saw Fifth Avenue a-glitter with uniforms, and one third of them
seemed to be petticoated. The Featherloom factory saw little of Emma
now. She bore the title of Commandant with feminine captains,
lieutenants, and girl workers under her; and her blue uniform, as she
herself put it, was so a-jingle with straps, buckles, belts, bars, and
bolts that when she first put it on she felt like a jail.
She left the house at eight in the morning now. Dinner time rarely found
her back in Sixty-third Street. Buck was devoting four evenings a week
to the draft board. At the time of the second Liberty Loan drive in the
autumn he had deserted Featherlooms for bonds. His success was due to
the commodity he had for sale, the type of person to whom he sold it,
and his own selling methods and personality. There was something about
this slim, leisurely man, with the handsome eyes and the quiet voice,
that convinced and impressed you.
"It's your complete lack of eagerness in the transaction, too," Emma
remarked after watching him land a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bond
pledge, the buyer a business rival of the Featherloom Petticoat Company.
"You make it seem a privilege, not a favour. A man with your method
could sell sandbags in the Sahara."
Sometimes the two dined downtown together. Sometimes they scarcely saw
each other for days on end. One afternoon at 5.30, Emma, on duty bound,
espied him walking home up Fifth Avenue, on the opposite side of the
street. She felt a little pang as she watched the easy, graceful figure
swinging its way up the brilliant, flag-decked avenue. She had given him
so little time and thought; she had bestowed upon the house such scant
attention in the last few weeks. She turned abruptly and crossed the
street, dodging the late afternoon traffic with a sort of expert
recklessness. She almost ran after the tall figure that was now a block
ahead of her, and walking fast. She caught up with him, matched his
stride, and touched his arm lightly.
"I beg your pardon, but aren't you Mr. T.A. Buck?"
"Yes."
"How do you do! I'm Mrs. Buck."
Then they had giggled together, deliciously, and he had put a firm hand
on the smartly tailored blue serge sleeve.
"I thought so. That being the case, you're coming home along o' me,
young 'ooman."
"Can't do it. I'm on my way to the Ritz to meet a dashing delegation
from Serbia. You never saw such gorgeous creatures. All gold and green
and red, with swords, and snake-work, and glittering boots. They'd make
a musical-comedy soldier look like an undertaker."
There came a queer little look into his eyes. "But this isn't a musical
comedy, dear. These men are--Look here, Emma. I want to talk to you.
Let's walk home together and have dinner decently in our own dining
room. There are things at the office--"
"S'impossible, Mr. Buck. I'm late now. And you know perfectly well there
are two vice-commandants ready to snatch my shoulder-straps."
"Emma! Emma!"
At his tone the smiling animation of her face was dimmed. "What's gone
wrong?"
"Nothing. Everything. At least, nothing that I can discuss with you at
the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street. When does this
Serbian thing end? I'll call for you."
"There's no telling. Anyway, the Fannings will drive me home, thanks,
dear."
He looked down at her. She was unbelievably girlish and distingué in the
blue uniform; a straight, slim figure, topped by an impudent cocked hat.
The flannel shirt of workaday service was replaced to-day by a severely
smart affair of white silk, high-collared, stitched, expensively simple.
And yet he frowned as he looked.
"Fisk got his exemption papers to-day." With apparent irrelevance.
"Yes?" She was glancing sharply up and down the thronged street. "Better
call me a cab, dear. I'm awfully late. Oh, well, with his wife
practically an invalid, and all the expense of the baby's illness, and
the funeral--The Ritz, dear. And tell him to hurry." She stepped into
the cab, a little nervous frown between her eyes.
But Buck, standing at the curb, seemed bent on delaying her. "Fisk told
me the doctor said all she needs is a couple of months at a sanitarium,
where she can be bathed and massaged and fed with milk. And if Fisk
could go to a camp now he'd have a commission in no time. He's had
training, you know. He spent his vacation last summer at Plattsburg."
"But he's due on his advance spring trip in two or three weeks, isn't
he?... I really must hurry, T.A."
"Ritz," said Buck, shortly, to the chauffeur. "And hurry." He turned
away abruptly, without a backward glance. Emma's head jerked over her
shoulder in surprise. But he did not turn. The tall figure disappeared.
Emma's taxi crept into the stream. But uppermost in her mind was not the
thought of Serbians, uniforms, Fisk, or Ritz, but of her husband's right
hand, which, as he turned away from the cab, had been folded tight into
a fist.
She meant to ask an explanation of the clenched fingers; but the
Serbians, despite their four tragic years, turned out to be as sprightly
as their uniforms, and it was past midnight when the Fannings dropped
her at her door. Her husband was rather ostentatiously asleep. As she
doffed her warlike garments, her feminine canniness warned her that this
was no time for explanations. Tomorrow morning would be better.
But next morning's breakfast turned out to be all Jock.
A letter from Grace, his wife. Grace McChesney had been Grace Gait, one
of the youngest and cleverest women advertising writers in the
profession. When Jock was a cub in the Raynor office she had been
turning out compelling copy. They had been married four years. Now Jock
ruled a mahogany domain of his own in the Raynor suite overlooking the
lake in the great Michigan Avenue building. And Grace was saying, "Eat
the crust, girlie. It's the crust that makes your hair grow curly."
Emma, uniformed for work, read hasty extracts from Grace's letter. Buck
listened in silence.
"You wouldn't know Jock. He's restless, irritable, moody. And the queer
part of it is he doesn't know it. He tries to be cheerful, and I could
weep to see him. He has tried to cover it up with every kind of war work
from Red Crossing to Liberty Loaning, and from writing free full-page
national advertising copy to giving up his tobacco money to the smoke
fund. And he's miserable. He wants to get into it. And he ought. But you
know I haven't been really husky since Buddy came. Not ill, but the
doctor says it will be another six months before I'm myself, really. If
I had only myself to think of--how simple! But two kiddies need such a
lot of things. I could get a job at Raynor's. They need writers. Jock
says, bitterly, that all the worth-while men have left. Don't think I'm
complaining. I'm just trying to see my way clear, and talking to someone
who understands often clears the way."
"Well!" said Emma.
And, "Well?" said T.A.
She sat fingering the letter, her breakfast cooling before her. "Of
course, Jock wants to get into it. I wish he could. I'd be so proud of
him. He'd be beautiful in khaki. But there's work to do right here. And
he ought to be willing to wait six months."
"They can't wait six months over there, Emma. They need him now."
"Oh, come, T.A.! One man--"
"Multiplied by a million. Look at Fisk. Just such another case. Look
at--"
The shrill summons of the telephone cut him short. Emma's head came up
alertly. She glanced at her wrist-watch and gave a little exclamation of
horror.
"That's for me! I'm half an hour late! The first time, too." She was at
the telephone a second later, explanatory, apologetic. Then back in the
dining-room doorway, her cheeks flushed, tugging at her gloves, poised
for flight. "Sorry, dear. But this morning was so important, and that
letter about Jock upset me. I'm afraid I'm a rotten soldier."
"I'm afraid you are, Emma."
She stared at that. "Why--! Oh, you're still angry at something. Listen,
dear--I'll call for you at the office to-night at five, and we'll walk
home together. Wait for me. I may be a few minutes late--"
She was off. The front door slammed sharply. Buck sat very still for a
long minute, staring down at the coffee cup whose contents he did not
mean to drink. The light from the window cameoed his fine profile. And
you saw that his jaw was set. His mind was a thousand miles away, in
Chicago, Illinois, with the boy who wanted to fight and couldn't.
Emma, flashing down Fifth Avenue as fast as wheels and traffic rules
would permit, saw nothing of the splendid street. Her mind was a
thousand miles away, in Chicago, Illinois.
And a thousand miles away, in Chicago, Illinois, Jock McChesney, three
hours later, was slamming down the two big windows of his office. From
up the street came the sound of a bugle and of a band playing a brisk
march. And his office windows looked out upon Michigan Avenue. If you
know Chicago, you know the building that housed the Raynor offices--a
great gray shaft, towering even above its giant neighbours, its head in
the clouds, its face set toward the blue beauty of Lake Michigan. Until
very recently those windows of his office had been a source of joy and
inspiration to Jock McChesney. The green of Grant Park just below. The
tangle of I.C. tracks beyond that, and the great, gracious lake beyond
that, as far as the eye could see. He had seen the changes the year had
brought. The lake dotted with sinister gray craft. Dog tents in Grant
Park, sprung up overnight like brown mushrooms. Men--mere boys, most of
them--awkward in their workaday clothes of office and shop, drilling,
wheeling, marching at the noon hour. And parades, and parades, and
parades. At first Jock, and, in fact, the entire office staff--heads of
departments, writers, secretaries, stenographers, office boys--would
suspend business and crowd to the windows to see the pageant pass in the
street below. Stirring music, khaki columns, flags, pennants, horses,
bugles. And always the Jackie band from the Great Lakes Station, its
white leggings twinkling down the street in the lead of its six-foot-six
contortionistic drum-major.
By October the window-gazers, watching the parades from the Raynor
windows, were mostly petticoated and exclamatory. Jock stayed away from
the window now. It seemed to his tortured mind that there was a fresh
parade hourly, and that bugles and bands sounded a taunting note.
"Where are _you_! (sounded the bugle)
Where are _you_?
Where are YOU?!!!
Where
are
you?
Where--are--you-u-u-u--"
He slammed down the windows, summoned a stenographer, and gave out
dictation in a loud, rasping voice.
"Yours of the tenth at hand, and contents noted. In reply I wish to
say--"
_(Boom! Boom! And a boom-boom-boom!)_
"--all copy for the Sans Scent Soap is now ready for your approval and
will be mailed to you to-day under separate cover. We in the office
think that this copy marks a new record in soap advertising--"
_(Over there! Over there! Send the word, send the word over there!)_
"Just read that last line will you, Miss Dugan?"
"Over th--I mean, 'We in the office think that this copy marks a new
record in soap advertising--'"
"H'm. Yes." A moment's pause. A dreamy look on the face of the girl
stenographer. Jock interpreted it. He knew that the stenographer was in
the chair at the side of his desk, taking his dictation accurately and
swiftly, while the spirit of the girl herself was far and away at Camp
Grant at Rockford, Illinois, with an olive-drab unit in an olive-drab
world.
"--and, in fact, in advertising copy of any description that has been
sent out from the Raynor offices."
The girl's pencil flew over the pad. But when Jock paused for thought or
breath she lifted her head and her eyes grew soft and bright, and her
foot, in its absurd high-heeled gray boot, beat a smart left! Left!
Left-right-left!
Something of this picture T.A. Buck saw in his untasted coffee cup. Much
of it Emma visualized in her speeding motor car. All of it Grace knew by
heart as she moved about the new, shining house in the Chicago suburb,
thinking, planning; feeling his agony, and trying not to admit the
transparency of the look about her hands and her temples. So much for
Chicago.
* * * * *
At five o'clock Emma left the war to its own devices and dropped in at
the loft building in which Featherlooms were born and grew up. Mike, the
elevator man, twisted his gray head about at an unbelievable length to
gaze appreciatively at the trim, uniformed figure.
"Haven't seen you around fur many the day, Mis' Buck."
"Been too busy, Mike."
Mike turned back to face the door. "Well, 'tis a great responsibility,
runnin' this war, an' all." He stopped at the Featherloom floor and
opened the door with his grandest flourish. Emma glanced at him quickly.
His face was impassive. She passed into the reception room with a little
jingling of buckles and strap hooks.
The work day was almost ended. The display room was empty of buyers. She
could see the back of her husband's head in his office. He was busy at
his desk. A stock girl was clearing away the piles of garments that
littered tables and chairs. At the window near the door Fisk, the
Western territory man, stood talking with O'Brien, city salesman. The
two looked around at her approach. O'Brien's face lighted up with
admiration. Into Fisk's face there flashed a look so nearly resembling
resentment that Emma, curious to know its origin, stopped to chat a
moment with the two.
Said O'Brien, the gallant Irishman, "I'm more resigned to war this
minute, Mrs. Buck, than I've been since it began."
Emma dimpled, turned to Fisk, stood at attention. Fisk said nothing. His
face was unsmiling. "Like my uniform?" Emma asked; and wished, somehow,
that she hadn't.
Fisk stared. His eyes had none of the softness of admiration. They were
hard, resentful. Suddenly, "Like it! God! I wish I could wear one!" He
turned away, abruptly. O'Brien threw him a sharp look. Then he cleared
his throat, apologetically.
Emma glanced down at her own trim self--at her stitched seams, her
tailored lengths, her shining belt and buckles, her gloved hands--and
suddenly and unaccountably her pride in them vanished.
Something--something--
She wheeled and made for Buck's office, her colour high. He looked up,
rose, offered her a chair. She felt strangely ill at ease there in the
office to which she had given years of service. The bookkeeper in the
glass-enclosed cubby-hole across the little hall smiled and nodded and
called through the open door: "My, you're a stranger, Mrs. Buck."
"Be with you in a minute, Emma," said T.A. And turned to his desk again.
She rose and strolled toward the door, restlessly. "Don't hurry." Out in
the showroom again she saw Fisk standing before a long table. He was
ticketing and folding samples of petticoats, pajamas, blouses, and
night-gowns. His cigar was gripped savagely between his teeth and his
eyes squinted, half closed through the smoke.
She strolled over to him and fingered the cotton flannel of a garment
that lay under her hand. "Spring samples?"
"Yes."
"It ought to be a good trip. They say the West is dripping money, war or
no war."
"'S right."
"How's Gertie?"
"Don't get me started, Mrs. Buck. That girl!--say, I knew what she was
when I married her, and so did you. She was head stenographer here long
enough. But I never really knew that kid until now, and we've been
married two years. You know what the last year has been for her; the
baby and all. And then losing him. And do you know what she says! That
if there was somebody who knew the Western territory and could cover it,
she'd get a job and send me to war. Yessir! That's Gert. We've been
married two years, and she says herself it's the first really happy time
she's ever known. You know what she had at home. Why, even when I was
away on my long spring trip she used to say it wasn't so bad being
alone, because there was always my home-coming to count on. How's that
for a wife!"
"Gertie's splendid," agreed Emma. And wondered why it sounded so lame.
"You don't know her. Why, when it comes to patriotism, she makes T.R.
look like a pacifist. She says if she could sell my line on the road,
she'd make you give her the job so she could send her man to war. Gert
says a travelling man's wife ought to make an ideal soldier's wife,
anyway; and that if I went it would only be like my long Western trip,
multiplied by about ten, maybe. That's Gertie."
Emma was fingering the cotton-flannel garment on the table.
Buck crossed the room and stood beside her. "Sorry I kept you waiting.
Three of the boys were called to-day. It crippled us pretty badly in the
shipping room. Ready?"
"Yes. Good-night, Charley. Give my love to Gertie."
"Thanks, Mrs. Buck." He picked up his cigar, took an apprehensive puff
and went on ticketing and folding. There was a grin behind the cigar
now.
Into the late afternoon glitter of Fifth Avenue. Five o'clock Fifth
Avenue. Flags of every nation, save one. Uniforms of every blue from
French to navy; of almost any shade save field green. Pongee-coloured
Englishmen, seeming seven feet high, to a man; aviators slim and
elegant, with walking sticks made of the propeller of their shattered
planes, with a notch for every Hun plane bagged. Slim girls, exotic as
the orchids they wore, gazing limpid-eyed at these warrior _élégants_.
Women uniformed to the last degree of tailored exquisiteness. Girls, war
accoutred, who brought arms up in sharp salute as they passed Emma. Buck
eyed them gravely, hat and arm describing parabolas with increasing
frequency as they approached Fiftieth Street, slackening as the
colourful pageant grew less brilliant, thinned, and faded into the park
mists.
Emma's cheeks were a glorious rose-pink. Head high, shoulders back, she
matched her husband's long stride every step of the way. Her eyes were
bright and very blue.
"There's a beautiful one, T.A.! The Canadian officer with the limp.
They've all been gassed, and shot five times in the thigh and seven in
the shoulder, and yet look at 'em! What do you suppose they were when
they were new if they can look like that, damaged!"
Buck cut a vicious little semi-circle in the air with his walking stick.
"I know now how the father of the Gracchi felt, and why you never hear
him mentioned."
"Nonsense, T.A. You're doing a lot." She did not intend her tone to be
smug; but if she had glanced sidewise at her husband, she might have
seen the pained red mount from chin to brow. She did not seem to sense
his hurt. They went on, past the plaza now. Only a few blocks lay
between them and their home; the old brownstone house that had been New
York's definition of architectural elegance in the time of T.A. Buck,
Sr.
"Tell me, Emma. Does this satisfy you--the work you're doing, I mean? Do
you think you're giving the best you've got?"
"Well, of course I'd like to go to France--"
"I didn't ask you what you'd like."
"Yes, sir. Very good, sir. I don't know what you call giving the best
one has got. But you know I work from eight in the morning until
midnight, often and often. Oh, I don't say that someone else couldn't do
my work just as well. And I don't say, either, that it doesn't include a
lot of dashing up and down Fifth Avenue, and teaing at the Ritz, and
meeting magnificent Missions, and being cooed over by Lady Millionaires.
But if you'd like a few statistics as to the number of hundreds of
thousands of soldiers we've canteened since last June, I'd be pleased to
oblige." She tugged at a capacious pocket and brought forth a smart
leather-bound notebook.
"Spare me! I've had all the statistics I can stand for one day at the
office. I know you're working hard. I just wondered if you didn't
realize--"