a bashful schoolboy. 

 "You—you couldn't kill two birds with one stone on this trip, could you, Mrs. Mack?" 

 Mrs. McChesney, back at her desk again, threw him an inquiring glance over her shoulder. 

 "You might make it a combination honeymoon and Featherloom expedition." 

 "T. A. Buck!" exclaimed Emma McChesney. Then, as Buck dodged for the door:  "Just for that, I'm going to break this to you. You know that I intended to handle the Middle Western territory for one trip, or until we could get a man to take Fat Ed Meyers' place." 

 "Well?" said Buck apprehensively. 

 "I leave in three days. Goodness knows how long I'll be gone! A business deal down there is a ceremony. And—you won't need any white-flannel clothes in Rock Island, Illinois." 

 Buck, aghast, faced her from the doorway. 

 "You mean, I——" 

 "Just that," smiled Emma McChesney pleasantly. And pressed the button that summoned the stenographer. 

 In the next forty-eight hours, Mrs. McChesney performed a series of mental and physical calisthenics that would have landed an ordinary woman in a sanatorium. She cleaned up with the thoroughness and dispatch of a housewife who, before going to the seashore, forgets not instructions to the iceman, the milkman, the janitor, and the maid. She surveyed her territory, behind and before, as a general studies troops and countryside before going into battle; she foresaw factory emergencies, dictated office policies, made sure of staff organization like the business woman she was. Out in the stock-room, under her supervision, there was scientifically packed into sample-trunks and cases a line of Featherloom skirts and knickers calculated to dazzle Brazil and entrance Argentina. And into her own personal trunk there went a wardrobe, each article of which was a garment with a purpose. Emma McChesney knew the value of a smartly tailored suit in a business argument. 

 T. A. Buck canceled his order at the tailor's, made up his own line for the Middle West, and prepared to storm that prosperous and important territory for the first time in his business career. 

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