The Project Gutenberg EBook of Roast Beef, Medium, by Edna Ferber This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Roast Beef, Medium Author: Edna Ferber Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6016] This file was first posted on October 17, 2002 Last Updated: March 15, 2018 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM *** Text file produced by Carel Lyn Miske, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team HTML file produced by David Widger ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM THE BUSINESS ADVENTURES OF EMMA McCHESNEY By Edna Ferber Author of “Dawn O'Hara,” “Buttered Side Down,” Etc. With twenty-seven illustrations by James Montgomery Flagg {Illustration: “'And they call that thing a petticoat!'”} CONTENTS FOREWORD ILLUSTRATIONS (not available in this edition) I. — ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM II. — REPRESENTING T. A. BUCK III. — CHICKENS IV. — HIS MOTHER'S SON V. — PINK TIGHTS AND GINGHAMS VI. — SIMPLY SKIRTS VII. — UNDERNEATH THE HIGH-CUT VEST VIII. — CATCHING UP WITH CHRISTMAS IX. — KNEE-DEEP IN KNICKERS X. — IN THE ABSENCE OF THE AGENT FOREWORD Roast Beef, Medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy. Seated at Life's Dining Table, with the Menu of Morals before you, your eye wanders a bit over the entrees, the hors d'oeuvres, and the things a la, though you know that Roast Beef, Medium, is safe, and sane, and sure. It agrees with you. As you hesitate there sounds in your ear a soft and insinuating Voice. “You'll find the tongue in aspic very nice today,” purrs the Voice. “May I recommend the chicken pie, country style? Perhaps you'd relish something light and tempting. Eggs Benedictine. Very fine. Or some flaked crab meat, perhaps. With a special Russian sauce.” Roast Beef, Medium! How unimaginative it sounds. How prosaic, and dry! You cast the thought of it aside with the contempt that it deserves, and you assume a fine air of the epicure as you order. There are set before you things encased in pastry; things in frilly paper trousers; things that prick the tongue; sauces that pique the palate. There are strange vegetable garnishings, cunningly cut. This is not only Food. These are Viands. “Everything satisfactory?” inquires the insinuating Voice. “Yes,” you say, and take a hasty sip of water. That paprika has burned your tongue. “Yes. Check, please.” You eye the score, appalled. “Look here! Aren't you over-charging!” “Our regular price,” and you catch a sneer beneath the smugness of the Voice. “It is what every one pays, sir.” You reach deep, deep into your pocket, and you pay. And you rise and go, full but not fed. And later as you take your fifth Moral Pepsin Tablet you say Fool! and Fool! and Fool! When next we dine we are not tempted by the Voice. We are wary of weird sauces. We shun the cunning aspics. We look about at our neighbor's table. He is eating of things French, and Russian and Hungarian. Of food garnished, and garish and greasy. And with a little sigh of Content and resignation we settle down to our Roast Beef, Medium. E. F. ILLUSTRATIONS (not available in this edition) “'And they call that thing a petticoat!'” “'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,' he announced, glibly” “'That was a married kiss—a two-year-old married kiss at least'” “'I won't ask you to forgive a hound like me'” “'You'll never grow up, Emma McChesney'” “'Well, s'long then, Shrimp. See you at eight'” “'I'm still in a position to enforce that ordinance against pouting'” “'Son!' echoed the clerk, staring” “'Well!' gulped Jock, 'those two double-bedded, bloomin', blasted Bisons—'” “'Come on out of here and I'll lick the shine off your shoes, you blue-eyed babe, you!'” “'You can't treat me with your life's history. I'm going in'” “'Now, Lillian Russell and cold cream is one; and new potatoes and brown crocks is another.'” “'Why, girls, I couldn't hold down a job in a candy factory'” “'Honestly, I'd wear it myself!'” “'I've lived petticoats, I've talked petticoats, I've dreamed petticoats—why, I've even worn the darn things!'” "And found himself addressing the backs of the letters on the door marked 'Private'.” “'Shut up, you blamed fool! Can't you see the lady's sick?'” "At his gaze that lady fled, sample-case banging at her knees” "In the exuberance of his young strength, he picked her up” "She read it again, dully, as though every selfish word had not already stamped itself on her brain and heart.” “'Not that you look your age—not by ten years!”' “'Christmas isn't a season ... it's a feeling; and, thank God, I've got it!'” "No man will ever appreciate the fine points of this little garment, but the women—” "Emma McChesney ... I believe in you now! Dad and I both believe in you.” "It had been a whirlwind day.” “'Emma,' he said, 'will you marry me?'” “'Welcome home!' she cried. 'Sketch in the furniture to suit yourself.'” I. — ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM There is a journey compared to which the travels of Bunyan's hero were a summer-evening's stroll. The Pilgrims by whom this forced march is taken belong to a maligned fraternity, and are known as traveling men. Sample-case in hand, trunk key in pocket, cigar in mouth, brown derby atilt at an angle of ninety, each young and untried traveler starts on his journey down that road which leads through morasses of chicken a la Creole, over greasy mountains of queen fritters made doubly perilous by slippery glaciers of rum sauce, into formidable jungles of breaded veal chops threaded by sanguine and deadly streams of tomato gravy, past sluggish mires of dreadful things en casserole, over hills of corned-beef hash, across shaking quagmires of veal glace, plunging into sloughs of slaw, until, haggard, weary, digestion shattered, complexion gone, he reaches the safe haven of roast beef, medium. Once there, he never again strays, although the pompadoured, white-aproned siren sing-songs in his ear the praises of Irish stew, and pork with apple sauce. Emma McChesney was eating her solitary supper at the Berger house at Three Rivers, Michigan. She had arrived at the Roast Beef haven many years before. She knew the digestive perils of a small town hotel dining-room as a guide on the snow-covered mountain knows each treacherous pitfall and chasm. Ten years on the road had taught her to recognize the deadly snare that lurks in the seemingly calm bosom of minced chicken with cream sauce. Not for her the impenetrable mysteries of a hamburger and onions. It had been a struggle, brief but terrible, from which Emma McChesney had emerged triumphant, her complexion and figure saved. No more metaphor. On with the story, which left Emma at her safe and solitary supper. She had the last number of the Dry Goods Review propped up against the vinegar cruet and the Worcestershire, and the salt shaker. Between conscientious, but disinterested mouthfuls of medium roast beef, she was reading the snappy ad set forth by her firm's bitterest competitors, the Strauss Sans-silk Skirt Company. It was a good reading ad. Emma McChesney, who had forgotten more about petticoats than the average skirt salesman ever knew, presently allowed her luke-warm beef to grow cold and flabby as she read. Somewhere in her subconscious mind she realized that the lanky head waitress had placed some one opposite her at the table. Also, subconsciously, she heard him order liver and bacon, with onions. She told herself that as soon as she reached the bottom of the column she'd look up to see who the fool was. She never arrived at the column's end. “I just hate to tear you away from that love lyric; but if I might trouble you for the vinegar—” Emma groped for it back of her paper and shoved it across the table without looking up, “—and the Worcester—” One eye on the absorbing column, she passed the tall bottle. But at its removal her prop was gone. The Dry Goods Review was too weighty for the salt shaker alone. “—and the salt. Thanks. Warm, isn't it?” There was a double vertical frown between Emma McChesney's eyes as she glanced up over the top of her Dry Goods Review. The frown gave way to a half smile. The glance settled into a stare. “But then, anybody would have stared. He expected it,” she said, afterwards, in telling about it. “I've seen matinee idols, and tailors' supplies salesmen, and Julian Eltinge, but this boy had any male professional beauty I ever saw, looking as handsome and dashing as a bowl of cold oatmeal. And he knew it.” Now, in the ten years that she had been out representing T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats Emma McChesney had found it necessary to make a rule or two for herself. In the strict observance of one of these she had become past mistress in the fine art of congealing the warm advances of fresh and friendly salesmen of the opposite sex. But this case was different, she told herself. The man across the table was little more than a boy—an amazingly handsome, astonishingly impudent, cockily confident boy, who was staring with insolent approval at Emma McChesney's trim, shirt-waisted figure, and her fresh, attractive coloring, and her well-cared-for hair beneath the smart summer hat. {Illustration: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” he announced, glibly.} “It isn't in human nature to be as good-looking as you are,” spake Emma McChesney, suddenly, being a person who never trifled with half-way measures. “I'll bet you have bad teeth, or an impediment in your speech.” The gorgeous young man smiled. His teeth were perfect. “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” he announced, glibly. “Nothing missing there, is there?” “Must be your morals then,” retorted Emma McChesney. “My! My! And on the road! Why, the trail of bleeding hearts that you must leave all the way from Maine to California would probably make the Red Sea turn white with envy.” The Fresh Young Kid speared a piece of liver and looked soulfully up into the adoring eyes of the waitress who was hovering over him. “Got any nice hot biscuits to-night, girlie?” he inquired. “I'll get you some; sure,” wildly promised his handmaiden, and disappeared kitchenward. “Brand new to the road, aren't you?” observed Emma McChesney, cruelly. “What makes you think—” “Liver and bacon, hot biscuits, Worcestershire,” elucidated she. “No old-timer would commit suicide that way. After you've been out for two or three years you'll stick to the Rock of Gibraltar—roast beef, medium. Oh, I get wild now and then, and order eggs if the girl says she knows the hen that layed 'em, but plain roast beef, unchloroformed, is the one best bet. You can't go wrong if you stick to it.” The god-like young man leaned forward, forgetting to eat. “You don't mean to tell me you're on the road!” “Why not?” demanded Emma McChesney, briskly. “Oh, fie, fie!” said the handsome youth, throwing her a languishing look. “Any woman as pretty as you are, and with those eyes, and that hair, and figure—Say, Little One, what are you going to do to-night?” Emma McChesney sugared her tea, and stirred it, slowly. Then she looked up. “To-night, you fresh young kid, you!” she said calmly, “I'm going to dictate two letters, explaining why business was rotten last week, and why it's going to pick up next week, and then I'm going to keep an engagement with a nine-hour beauty sleep.” “Don't get sore at a fellow. You'd take pity on me if you knew how I have to work to kill an evening in one of these little townpump burgs. Kill 'em! It can't be done. They die harder than the heroine in a ten, twenty, thirty. From supper to bedtime is twice as long as from breakfast to supper. Honest!” But Emma McChesney looked inexorable, as women do just before they relent. Said she: “Oh, I don't know. By the time I get through trying to convince a bunch of customers that T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoat has every other skirt in the market looking like a piece of Fourth of July bunting that's been left out in the rain, I'm about ready to turn down the spread and leave a call for six- thirty.” “Be a good fellow,” pleaded the unquenchable one. “Let's take in all the nickel shows, and then see if we can't drown our sorrows in—er—” Emma McChesney slipped a coin under her plate, crumpled her napkin, folded her arms on the table, and regarded the boy across the way with what our best talent calls a long, level look. It was so long and so level that even the airiness of the buoyant youngster at whom it was directed began to lessen perceptibly, long before Emma began to talk. “Tell me, young 'un, did any one ever refuse you anything? I thought not. I should think that when you realize what you've got to learn it would scare you to look ahead. I don't expect you to believe me when I tell you I never talk to fresh guys like you, but it's true. I don't know why I'm breaking my rule for you, unless it's because you're so unbelievably good-looking that I'm anxious to know where the blemish is. The Lord don't make 'em perfect, you know. I'm going to get out those letters, and then, if it's just the same to you, we'll take a walk. These nickel shows are getting on my nerves. It seems to me that if I have to look at one more Western picture about a fool girl with her hair in a braid riding a show horse in the wilds of Clapham Junction and being rescued from a band of almost- Indians by the handsome, but despised Eastern tenderfoot, or if I see one more of those historical pictures, with the women wearing costumes that are a pass between early Egyptian and late State Street, I know I'll get hysterics and have to be carried shrieking, up the aisle. Let's walk down Main Street and look in the store windows, and up as far as the park and back.” “Great!” assented he. “Is there a park? “I don't know,” replied Emma McChesney, “but there is. And for your own good I'm going to tell you a few things. There's more to this traveling game than just knocking down on expenses, talking to every pretty woman you meet, and learning to ask for fresh white- bread heels at the Palmer House in Chicago. I'll meet you in the lobby at eight.” Emma McChesney talked steadily, and evenly, and generously, from eight until eight-thirty. She talked from the great storehouse of practical knowledge which she had accumulated in her ten years on the road. She told the handsome young cub many things for which he should have been undyingly thankful. But when they reached the park—the cool, dim, moon-silvered park, its benches dotted with glimpses of white showing close beside a blur of black, Emma McChesney stopped talking. Not only did she stop talking, but she ceased to think of the boy seated beside her on the bench. In the band-stand, under the arc-light, in the center of the pretty little square, some neighborhood children were playing a noisy game, with many shrill cries, and much shouting and laughter. Suddenly, from one of the houses across the way, a woman's voice was heard, even above the clamor of the children. “Fred-dee!” called the voice. “Maybelle! Come, now.” And a boy's voice answered, as boys' voices have since Cain was a child playing in the Garden of Eden, and as boys' voices will as long as boys are: “Aw, ma, I ain't a bit sleepy. We just begun a new game, an' I'm leader. Can't we just stay out a couple of minutes more?” “Well, five minutes,” agreed the voice. “But don't let me call you again.” Emma McChesney leaned back on the rustic bench and clasped her strong, white hands behind her head, and stared straight ahead into the soft darkness. And if it had been light you could have seen that the bitter lines showing faintly about her mouth were outweighed by the sweet and gracious light which was glowing in her eyes. “Fred-dee!” came the voice of command again. “May-belle! This minute, now!” One by one the flying little figures under the arc-light melted away in the direction of the commanding voice and home and bed. And Emma McChesney forgot all about fresh young kids and featherloom petticoats and discounts and bills of lading and sample-cases and grouchy buyers. After all, it had been her protecting maternal instinct which had been aroused by the boy at supper, although she had not known it then. She did not know it now, for that matter. She was busy remembering just such evenings in her own life—summer evenings, filled with the high, shrill laughter of children at play. She too, had stood in the doorway, making a funnel of her hands, so that her clear call through the twilight might be heard above the cries of the boys and girls. She had known how loath the little feet had been to leave their play, and how they had lagged up the porch stairs, and into the house. Years, whose memory she had tried to keep behind her, now suddenly loomed before her in the dim quiet of the little flower-scented park. A voice broke the silence, and sent her dream-thoughts scattering to the winds. “Honestly, kid,” said the voice, “I could be crazy about you, if you'd let me.” The forgotten figure beside her woke into sudden life. A strong arm encircled her shoulders. A strong hand seized her own, which were clasped behind her head. Two warm, eager lips were pressed upon her lips, checking the little cry of surprise and wrath that rose in her throat. Emma McChesney wrenched herself free with a violent jerk, and pushed him from her. She did not storm. She did not even rise. She sat very quietly, breathing fast. When she turned at last to look at the boy beside her it seemed that her white profile cut the darkness. The man shrank a little, and would have stammered something, but Emma McChesney checked him. {Illustration: “'That was a married kiss—a two-year-old married kiss at least.'”} “You nasty, good-for-nothing, handsome young devil, you!” she said. “So you're married.” He sat up with a jerk. “How did you—what makes you think so?” “That was a married kiss—a two-year-old married kiss, at least. No boy would get as excited as that about kissing an old stager like me. The chances are you're out of practise. I knew that if it wasn't teeth or impediment it must be morals. And it is.” She moved over on the bench until she was close beside him. “Now, listen to me, boy.” She leaned forward, impressively. “Are you listening?” “Yes,” answered the handsome young devil, sullenly. “What I've got to say to you isn't so much for your sake, as for your wife's. I was married when I was eighteen, and stayed married eight years. I've had my divorce ten years, and my boy is seventeen years old. Figure it out. How old is Ann?” “I don't believe it,” he flashed back. “You're not a day over twenty-six—anyway, you don't look it. I—” “Thanks,” drawled Emma. “That's because you've never seen me in negligee. A woman's as old as she looks with her hair on the dresser and bed only a few minutes away. Do you know why I was decent to you in the first place? Because I was foolish enough to think that you reminded me of my own kid. Every fond mama is gump enough to think that every Greek god she sees looks like her own boy, even if her own happens to squint and have two teeth missing—which mine hasn't, thank the Lord! He's the greatest young —Well, now, look here, young 'un. I'm going to return good for evil. Traveling men and geniuses should never marry. But as long as you've done it, you might as well start right. If you move from this spot till I get through with you, I'll yell police and murder. Are you ready?” “I'm dead sorry, on the square, I am—” “Ten minutes late,” interrupted Emma McChesney. “I'm dishing up a sermon, hot, for one, and you've got to choke it down. Whenever I hear a traveling man howling about his lonesome evenings, and what a dog's life it is, and no way for a man to live, I always wonder what kind of a summer picnic he thinks it is for his wife. She's really a widow seven months in the year, without any of a widow's privileges. Did you ever stop to think what she's doing evenings? No, you didn't. Well, I'll tell you. She's sitting home, night after night, probably embroidering monograms on your shirt sleeves by way of diversion. And on Saturday night, which is the night when every married woman has the inalienable right to be taken out by her husband, she can listen to the woman in the flat upstairs getting ready to go to the theater. The fact that there's a ceiling between 'em doesn't prevent her from knowing just where they're going, and why he has worked himself into a rage over his white lawn tie, and whether they're taking a taxi or the car and who they're going to meet afterward at supper. Just by listening to them coming downstairs she can tell how much Mrs. Third Flat's silk stockings cost, and if she's wearing her new La Valliere or not. Women have that instinct, you know. Or maybe you don't. There's so much you've missed.” “Say, look here—” broke from the man beside her. But Emma McChesney laid her cool fingers on his lips. “Nothing from the side-lines, please,” she said. “After they've gone she can go to bed, or she can sit up, pretending to read, but really wondering if that squeaky sound coming from the direction of the kitchen is a loose screw in the storm door, or if it's some one trying to break into the flat. And she'd rather sit there, scared green, than go back through that long hall to find out. And when Tillie comes home with her young man at eleven o'clock, though she promised not to stay out later than ten, she rushes back to the kitchen and falls on her neck, she's so happy to see her. Oh, it's a gay life. You talk about the heroism of the early Pilgrim mothers! I'd like to know what they had on the average traveling man's wife.” “Bess goes to the matinee every Saturday,” he began, in feeble defense. “Matinee!” scoffed Emma McChesney. “Do you think any woman goes to matinee by preference? Nobody goes but girls of sixteen, and confirmed old maids without brothers, and traveling men's wives. Matinee! Say, would you ever hesitate to choose between an all-day train and a sleeper? It's the same idea. What a woman calls going to the theater is something very different. It means taking a nap in the afternoon, so her eyes will be bright at night, and then starting at about five o'clock to dress, and lay her husband's clean things out on the bed. She loves it. She even enjoys getting his bath towels ready, and putting his shaving things where he can lay his hands on 'em, and telling the girl to have dinner ready promptly at six-thirty. It means getting out her good dress that hangs in the closet with a cretonne bag covering it, and her black satin coat, and her hat with the paradise aigrettes that she bought with what she saved out of the housekeeping money. It means her best silk stockings, and her diamond sunburst that he's going to have made over into a La Valliere just as soon as business is better. She loves it all, and her cheeks get pinker and pinker, so that she really doesn't need the little dash of rouge that she puts on 'because everybody does it, don't you know?' She gets ready, all but her dress, and then she puts on a kimono and slips out to the kitchen to make the gravy for the chicken because the girl never can get it as smooth as he likes it. That's part of what she calls going to the theater, and having a husband. And if there are children—” There came a little, inarticulate sound from the boy. But Emma's quick ear caught it. “No? Well, then, we'll call that one black mark less for you. But if there are children—and for her sake I hope there will be—she's father and mother to them. She brings them up, single-handed, while he's on the road. And the worst she can do is to say to them, 'Just wait until your father gets home. He'll hear of this.' But shucks! When he comes home he can't whip the kids for what they did seven weeks before, and that they've forgotten all about, and for what he never saw, and can't imagine. Besides, he wants his comfort when he gets home. He says he wants a little rest and peace, and he's darned if he's going to run around evenings. Not much, he isn't! But he doesn't object to her making a special effort to cook all those little things that he's been longing for on the road. Oh, there'll be a seat in Heaven for every traveling man's wife—though at that, I'll bet most of 'em will find themselves stuck behind a post.” “You're all right!” exclaimed Emma McChesney's listener, suddenly. “How a woman like you can waste her time on the road is more than I can see. And—I want to thank you. I'm not such a fool—” “I haven't let you finish a sentence so far and I'm not going to yet. Wait a minute. There's one more paragraph to this sermon. You remember what I told you about old stagers, and the roast beef diet? Well, that applies right through life. It's all very well to trifle with the little side-dishes at first, but there comes a time when you've got to quit fooling with the minced chicken, and the imitation lamb chops of this world, and settle down to plain, everyday, roast beef, medium. That other stuff may tickle your palate for a while, but sooner or later it will turn on you, and ruin your moral digestion. You stick to roast beef, medium. It may sound prosaic, and unimaginative and dry, but you'll find that it wears in the long run. You can take me over to the hotel now. I've lost an hour's sleep, but I don't consider it wasted. And you'll oblige me by putting the stopper on any conversation that may occur to you between here and the hotel. I've talked until I'm so low on words that I'll probably have to sell featherlooms in sign language to-morrow.” They walked to the very doors of the Berger House in silence. But at the foot of the stairs that led to the parlor floor he stopped, and looked into Emma McChesney's face. His own was rather white and tense. “Look here,” he said. “I've got to thank you. That sounds idiotic, but I guess you know what I mean. And I won't ask you to forgive a hound like me. I haven't been so ashamed of myself since I was a kid. Why, if you knew Bess—if you knew—” “I guess I know Bess, all right. I used to be a Bess, myself. Just because I'm a traveling man it doesn't follow that I've forgotten the Bess feeling. As far as that goes, I don't mind telling you that I've got neuralgia from sitting in that park with my feet in the damp grass. I can feel it in my back teeth, and by eleven o'clock it will be camping over my left eye, with its little brothers doing a war dance up the side of my face. And, boy, I'd give last week's commissions if there was some one to whom I had the right to say: 'Henry, will you get up and get me a hot-water bag for my neuralgia? It's something awful. And just open the left-hand lower drawer of the chiffonier and get out one of those gauze vests and then get me a safety pin from the tray on my dresser. I'm going to pin it around my head.'” {Illustration: “'I won't ask you to forgive a hound like me'”} II. — REPRESENTING T. A. BUCK Emma McChesney, Mrs. (I place it in the background because she generally did) swung off the 2:15, crossed the depot platform, and dived into the hotel 'bus. She had to climb over the feet of a fat man in brown and a lean man in black, to do it. Long practise had made her perfect in the art. She knew that the fat man and the thin man were hogging the end seats so that they could be the first to register and get a choice of rooms when the 'bus reached the hotel. The vehicle smelled of straw, and mold, and stables, and dampness, and tobacco, as 'buses have from old Jonas Chuzzlewit's time to this. Nine years on the road had accustomed Emma McChesney's nostrils to 'bus smells. She gazed stolidly out of the window, crossed one leg over the other, remembered that her snug suit-skirt wasn't built for that attitude, uncrossed them again, and caught the delighted and understanding eye of the fat traveling man, who was a symphony in brown—brown suit, brown oxfords, brown scarf, brown bat, brown-bordered handkerchief just peeping over the edge of his pocket. He looked like a colossal chocolate fudge. “Red-faced, grinning, and a naughty wink—I'll bet he sells coffins and undertakers' supplies,” mused Emma McChesney. “And the other one—the tall, lank, funereal affair in black—I suppose his line would be sheet music, or maybe phonographs. Or perhaps he's a lyceum bureau reader, scheduled to give an evening of humorous readings for the Young Men's Sunday Evening Club course at the First M. E. Church.” During those nine years on the road for the Featherloom Skirt Company Emma McChesney had picked up a side line or two on human nature. She was not surprised to see the fat man in brown and the thin man in black leap out of the 'bus and into the hotel before she had had time to straighten her hat after the wheels had bumped up against the curbing. By the time she reached the desk the two were disappearing in the wake of a bell-boy. The sartorial triumph behind the desk, languidly read her signature upside down, took a disinterested look at her, and yelled: “Front! Show the lady up to nineteen.” Emma McChesney took three steps in the direction of the stairway toward which the boy was headed with her bags. Then she stopped. “Wait a minute, boy,” she said, pleasantly enough; and walked back to the desk. She eyed the clerk, a half-smile on her lips, one arm, in its neat tailored sleeve, resting on the marble, while her right forefinger, trimly gloved, tapped an imperative little tattoo. (Perhaps you think that last descriptive sentence is as unnecessary as it is garbled. But don't you get a little picture of her—trim, taut, tailored, mannish-booted, flat-heeled, linen-collared, sailor-hatted?) “You've made a mistake, haven't you?” she inquired. “Mistake?” repeated the clerk, removing his eyes from their loving contemplation of his right thumb-nail. “Guess not.” “Oh, think it over,” drawled Emma McChesney. “I've never seen nineteen, but I can describe it with both eyes shut, and one hand tied behind me. It's an inside room, isn't it, over the kitchen, and just next to the water butt where the maids come to draw water for the scrubbing at 5 A.M.? And the boiler room gets in its best bumps for nineteen, and the patent ventilators work just next door, and there's a pet rat that makes his headquarters in the wall between eighteen and nineteen, and the housekeeper whose room is across the hail is afflicted with a bronchial cough, nights. I'm wise to the brand of welcome that you fellows hand out to us women on the road. This is new territory for me—my first trip West. Think it over. Don't—er—say, sixty-five strike you as being nearer my size?” The clerk stared at Emma McChesney, and Emma McChesney coolly stared back at the clerk. “Our aim,” began he, loftily, “is to make our guests as comfortable as possible on all occasions. But the last lady drummer who—” “That's all right,” interrupted Emma McChesney, “but I'm not the kind that steals the towels, and I don't carry an electric iron with me, either. Also I don't get chummy with the housekeeper and the dining-room girls half an hour after I move in. Most women drummers are living up to their reputations, but some of us are living 'em down. I'm for revision downward. You haven't got my number, that's all.” A slow gleam of unwilling admiration illumined the clerk's chill eye. He turned and extracted another key with its jangling metal tag, from one of the many pigeonholes behind him. “You win,” he said. He leaned over the desk and lowered his voice discreetly. “Say, girlie, go on into the cafe and have a drink on me.” “Wrong again,” answered Emma McChesney. “Never use it. Bad for the complexion. Thanks just the same. Nice little hotel you've got here.” In the corridor leading to sixty-five there was a great litter of pails, and mops, and brooms, and damp rags, and one heard the sigh of a vacuum cleaner. “Spring house-cleaning,” explained the bellboy, hurdling a pail. Emma McChesney picked her way over a little heap of dust-cloths and a ladder or so. “House-cleaning,” she repeated dreamily; “spring house-cleaning.” And there came a troubled, yearning light into her eyes. It lingered there after the boy had unlocked and thrown open the door of sixty-five, pocketed his dime, and departed. Sixty-five was—well, you know what sixty-five generally is in a small Middle-Western town. Iron bed—tan wall-paper—pine table —pine dresser—pine chair—red carpet—stuffy smell—fly buzzing at window—sun beating in from the west. Emma McChesney saw it all in one accustomed glance. “Lordy, I hate to think what nineteen must be,” she told herself, and unclasped her bag. Out came the first aid to the travel-stained —a jar of cold cream. It was followed by powder, chamois, brush, comb, tooth-brush. Emma McChesney dug four fingers into the cold cream jar, slapped the stuff on her face, rubbed it in a bit, wiped it off with a dry towel, straightened her hat, dusted the chamois over her face, glanced at her watch and hurriedly whisked downstairs. “After all,” she mused, “that thin guy might not be out for a music house. Maybe his line is skirts, too. You never can tell. Anyway, I'll beat him to it.” Saturday afternoon and spring-time in a small town! Do you know it? Main Street—on the right side—all a-bustle; farmers' wagons drawn up at the curbing; farmers' wives in the inevitable rusty black with dowdy hats furbished up with a red muslin rose in honor of spring; grand opening at the new five-and-ten-cent store, with women streaming in and streaming out again, each with a souvenir pink carnation pinned to her coat; every one carrying bundles and yellow paper bags that might contain bananas or hats or grass seed; the thirty-two automobiles that the town boasts all dashing up and down the street, driven by hatless youths in careful college clothes; a crowd of at least eleven waiting at Jenson's drug-store corner for the next interurban car. Emma McChesney found herself strolling when she should have been hustling in the direction of the Novelty Cloak and Suit Store. She was aware of a vague, strangely restless feeling in the region of her heart—or was it her liver?—or her lungs? Reluctantly she turned in at the entrance of the Novelty Cloak and Suit Store and asked for the buyer. (Here we might introduce one of those side-splitting little business deal scenes. But there can be paid no finer compliment to Emma McChesney's saleswomanship than to state that she landed her man on a busy Saturday afternoon, with a store full of customers and the head woman clerk dead against her from the start.) As she was leaving: “Generally it's the other way around,” smiled the boss, regarding Emma's trim comeliness, “but seeing you're a lady, why, it'll be on me.” He reached for his hat. “Let's go and have—ah—a little something.” “Not any, thanks,” Emma McChesney replied, a little wearily. On her way back to the hotel she frankly loitered. Just to look at her made you certain that she was not of our town. Now, that doesn't imply that the women of our town do not dress well, because they do. But there was something about her—a flirt of chiffon at the throat, or her hat quill stuck in a certain way, or the stitching on her gloves, or the vamp of her shoe—that was of a style which had not reached us yet. As Emma McChesney loitered, looking in at the shop windows and watching the women hurrying by, intent on the purchase of their Sunday dinners, that vaguely restless feeling seized her again. There were rows of plump fowls in the butcher-shop windows, and juicy roasts. The cunning hand of the butcher had enhanced the redness of the meat by trimmings of curly parsley. Salad things and new vegetables glowed behind the grocers' plate-glass. There were the tender green of lettuces, the coral of tomatoes, the brown-green of stout asparagus stalks, bins of spring peas and beans, and carrots, and bunches of greens for soup. There came over the businesslike soul of Emma McChesney a wild longing to go in and select a ten-pound roast, taking care that there should be just the right proportion of creamy fat and red meat. She wanted to go in and poke her fingers in the ribs of a broiler. She wanted to order wildly of sweet potatoes and vegetables, and soup bones, and apples for pies. She ached to turn back her sleeves and don a blue-and-white checked apron and roll out noodles. She still was fighting that wild impulse as she walked back to the hotel, went up to her stuffy room, and, without removing hat or coat, seated herself on the edge of the bed and stared long and hard at the tan wall-paper. There is this peculiarity about tan wall-paper. If you stare at it long enough you begin to see things. Emma McChesney, who pulled down something over thirty-two hundred a year selling Featherloom Petticoats, saw this: A kitchen, very bright and clean, with a cluttered kind of cleanliness that bespeaks many housewifely tasks under way. There were mixing bowls, and saucepans, and a kettle or so, and from the oven there came the sounds of sputtering and hissing. About the room there hung the divinely delectable scent of freshly baked cookies. Emma McChesney saw herself in an all-enveloping checked gingham apron, her sleeves rolled up, her hair somewhat wild, and one lock powdered with white where she had pushed it back with a floury hand. Her cheeks were surprisingly pink, and her eyes were very bright, and she was scraping a baking board and rolling-pin, and trimming the edges of pie tins, and turning with a whirl to open the oven door, stooping to dip up spoonfuls of gravy only to pour the rich brown liquid over the meat again. There were things on top of the stove that required sticking into with a fork, and other things that demanded tasting and stirring with a spoon. A neighbor came in to borrow a cup of molasses, and Emma urged upon her one of her freshly baked cookies. And there was a ring at the front-door bell, and she had to rush away to do battle with a persistent book agent.... The buzzing fly alighted on Emma McChesney's left eyebrow. She swatted it with a hand that was not quite quick enough, spoiled the picture, and slowly rose from her perch at the bedside. “Oh, damn!” she remarked, wearily, and went over to the dresser. Then she pulled down her shirtwaist all around and went down to supper. The dining-room was very warm, and there came a smell of lardy things from the kitchen. Those supping were doing so languidly. “I'm dying for something cool, and green, and fresh,” remarked Emma to the girl who filled her glass with iced water; “something springish and tempting.” “Well,” sing-songed she of the ruffled, starched skirt, “we have ham'n-aigs, mutton chops, cold veal, cold roast—” “Two, fried,” interrupted Emma hopelessly, “and a pot of tea—black.” Supper over she passed through the lobby on her way upstairs. The place was filled with men. They were lolling in the big leather chairs at the window, or standing about, smoking and talking. There was a rattle of dice from the cigar counter, and a burst of laughter from the men gathered about it. It all looked very bright, and cheery, and sociable. Emma McChesney, turning to ascend the stairs to her room, felt that she, too, would like to sit in one of the big leather chairs in the window and talk to some one. Some one was playing the piano in the parlor. The doors were open. Emma McChesney glanced in. Then she stopped. It was not the appearance of the room that held her. You may have heard of the wilds of an African jungle—the trackless wastes of the desert— the solitude of the forest—the limitless stretch of the storm-tossed ocean; they are cozy and snug when compared to the utter and soul- searing dreariness of a small town hotel parlor. You know what it is—red carpet, red plush and brocade furniture, full-length walnut mirror, battered piano on which reposes a sheet of music given away with the Sunday supplement of a city paper. A man was seated at the piano, playing. He was not playing the Sunday supplement sheet music. His brown hat was pushed back on his head and there was a fat cigar in his pursy mouth, and as he played he squinted up through the smoke. He was playing Mendelssohn's Spring Song. Not as you have heard it played by sweet young things; not as you have heard it rendered by the Apollo String Quartette. Under his fingers it was a fragrant, trembling, laughing, sobbing, exquisite thing. He was playing it in a way to make you stare straight ahead and swallow hard. Emma McChesney leaned her head against the door. The man at the piano did not turn. So she tip-toed in, found a chair in a corner, and noiselessly slipped into it. She sat very still, listening, and the past-that-might-have-been, and the future-that-was-to-be, stretched behind and before her, as is strangely often the case when we are listening to music. She stared ahead with eyes that were very wide open and bright. Something in the attitude of the man sitting hunched there over the piano keys, and something in the beauty and pathos of the music brought a hot haze of tears to her eyes. She leaned her head against the back of the chair, and shut her eyes and wept quietly and heart-brokenly. The tears slid down her cheeks, and dropped on her smart tailored waist and her Irish lace jabot, and she didn't care a bit. The last lovely note died away. The fat man's hands dropped limply to his sides. Emma McChesney stared at them, fascinated. They were quite marvelous hands; not at all the sort of hands one would expect to see attached to the wrists of a fat man. They were slim, nervous, sensitive hands, pink-tipped, tapering, blue-veined, delicate. As Emma McChesney stared at them the man turned slowly on the revolving stool. His plump, pink face was dolorous, sagging, wan-eyed. He watched Emma McChesney as she sat up and dried her eyes. A satisfied light dawned in his face. “Thanks,” he said, and mopped his forehead and chin and neck with the brown-edged handkerchief. “You—you can't be Paderewski. He's thin. But if he plays any better than that, then I don't want to hear him. You've upset me for the rest of the week. You've started me thinking about things—about things that—that-” The fat man clasped his thin, nervous hands in front of him and leaned forward. “About things that you're trying to forget. It starts me that way, too. That's why sometimes I don't touch the keys for weeks. Say, what do you think of a man who can play like that, and who is out on the road for a living just because he knows it's a sure thing? Music! That's my gift. And I've buried it. Why? Because the public won't take a fat man seriously. When he sits down at the piano they begin to howl for Italian rag. Why, I'd rather play the piano in a five-cent moving picture house than do what I'm doing now. But the old man wanted his son to be a business man, not a crazy, piano-playing galoot. That's the way he put it. And I was darn fool enough to think he was right. Why can't people stand up and do the things they're out to do! Not one person in a thousand does. Why, take you—I don't know you from Eve, but just from the way you shed the briny I know you're busy regretting.” “Regretting?” repeated Emma McChesney, in a wail. “Do you know what I am? I'm a lady drummer. And do you know what I want to do this minute? I want to clean house. I want to wind a towel around my head, and pin up my skirt, and slosh around with a pail of hot, soapy water. I want to pound a couple of mattresses in the back yard, and eat a cold dinner off the kitchen table. That's what I want to do.” “Well, go on and do it,” said the fat man. “Do it? I haven't any house to clean. I got my divorce ten years ago, and I've been on the road ever since. I don't know why I stick. I'm pulling down a good, fat salary and commissions, but it's no life for a woman, and I know it, but I'm not big enough to quit. It's different with a man on the road. He can spend his evenings taking in two or three nickel shows, or he can stand on the drug-store corner and watch the pretty girls go by, or he can have a game of billiards, or maybe cards. Or he can have a nice, quiet time just going up to his room, and smoking a cigar and writing to his wife or his girl. D'you know what I do?” “No,” answered the fat man, interestedly. “What?” “Evenings I go up to my room and sew or read. Sew! Every hook and eye and button on my clothes is moored so tight that even the hand laundry can't tear 'em off. You couldn't pry those fastenings away with dynamite. When I find a hole in my stockings I'm tickled to death, because it's something to mend. And read? Everything from the Rules of the House tacked up on the door to spelling out the French short story in the back of the Swell Set Magazine. It's getting on my nerves. Do you know what I do Sunday mornings? No, you don't. Well, I go to church, that's what I do. And I get green with envy watching the other women there getting nervous about 11:45 or so, when the minister is still in knee-deep, and I know they're wondering if Lizzie has basted the chicken often enough, and if she has put the celery in cold water, and the ice-cream is packed in burlap in the cellar, and if she has forgotten to mix in a tablespoon of flour to make it smooth. You can tell by the look on their faces that there's company for dinner. And you know that after dinner they'll sit around, and the men will smoke, and the women folks will go upstairs, and she'll show the other woman her new scalloped, monogrammed, hand-embroidered guest towels, and the waist that her cousin Ethel brought from Paris. And maybe they'll slip off their skirts and lie down on the spare-room bed for a ten minutes' nap. And you can hear the hired girl rattling the dishes in the kitchen, and talking to her lady friend who is helping her wipe up so they can get out early. You can hear the two of them laughing above the clatter of the dishes—” The fat man banged one fist down on the piano keys with a crash. “I'm through,” he said. “I quit to-night. I've got my own life to live. Here, will you shake on it? I'll quit if you will. You're a born housekeeper. You don't belong on the road any more than I do. It's now or never. And it's going to be now with me. When I strike the pearly gates I'm not going to have Saint Peter say to me, 'Ed, old kid, what have you done with your talents?'” “You're right,” sobbed Emma McChesney, her face glowing. “By the way,” interrupted the fat man, “what's your line?” “Petticoats. I'm out for T. A. Buck's Featherloom Skirts. What's yours?” “Suffering cats!” shouted the fat man. “D' you mean to tell me that you're the fellow who sold that bill to Blum, of the Novelty Cloak and Suit concern, and spoiled a sale for me?” “You! Are you—” “You bet I am. I sell the best little skirt in the world. Strauss's Sans-silk Petticoat, warranted not to crack, rip, or fall into holes. Greatest little skirt in the country.” Emma McChesney straightened her collar and jabot with a jerk, and sat up. “Oh, now, don't give me that bunk. You've got a good little seller, all right, but that guaranty don't hold water any more than the petticoat contains silk. I know that stuff. It looms up big in the window displays, but it's got a filler of glucose, or starch or mucilage or something, and two days after you wear it it's as limp as a cheesecloth rag. It's showy, but you take a line like mine, for instance, why —” “My customers swear by me. I make DeKalb to-morrow, and there's Nussbaum, of the Paris Emporium, the biggest store there, who just—” “I make DeKalb, too,” remarked Emma McChesney, the light of battle in her eye. “You mean,” gently insinuated the fat man, “that you were going to, but that's all over now.” “Huh?” said Emma. “Our agreement, you know,” the fat man reminded her, sweetly. “You aren't going back on that. The cottage and the Sunday dinner for you, remember.” “Of course,” agreed Emma listlessly. “I think I'll go up and get some sleep now. Didn't get much last night on the road.” “Won't you—er—come down and have a little something moist? Or we could have it sent up here,” suggested the fat man. “You're the third man that's asked me that to-day,” snapped Emma McChesney, somewhat crossly. “Say, what do I look like, anyway? I guess I'll have to pin a white ribbon on my coat lapel.” “No offense,” put in the fat man, with haste. “I just thought it would bind our bargain. I hope you'll be happy, and contented, and all that, you know.” “Let it go double,” replied Emma McChesney, and shook his hand. “Guess I'll run down and get a smoke,” remarked he. He ran down the stairs in a manner wonderfully airy for one so stout. Emma watched him until he disappeared around a bend in the stairs. Then she walked hastily in the direction of sixty-five. Down in the lobby the fat man, cigar in mouth, was cautioning the clerk, and emphasizing his remarks with one forefinger. “I want to leave a call for six thirty,” he was saying. “Not a minute later. I've got to get out of here on that 7:35 for DeKalb. Got a Sunday customer there.” As he turned away a telephone bell tinkled at the desk. The clerk bent his stately head. “Clerk. Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am, there's no train out of here to-night for DeKalb. To-morrow morning. Seven thirty-five A.M. I sure will. At six-thirty? Surest thing you know.” III. — CHICKENS For the benefit of the bewildered reader it should be said that there are two distinct species of chickens. There is the chicken which you find in the barnyard, in the incubator, or on a hat. And there is the type indigenous to State Str...