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Chickens
by
It was four-thirty when she took the elevator up to Mary Cutting’s office on the tenth floor. She knew she would find Mary Cutting there –Mary Cutting, friend, counselor, adviser to every young girl in the great store and to all Chicago’s silly, helpless “chickens.”
A dragon sat before Mary Cutting’s door and wrote names on slips. But at sight of Emma McChesney she laid down her pencil.
“Well,” smiled the dragon, “you’re a sight for sore eyes. There’s nobody in there with her. Just walk in and surprise her.”
At a rosewood desk in a tiny cozy office sat a pink-cheeked, white- haired woman. You associated her in your mind with black velvet and real lace. She did not look up as Emma McChesney entered. Emma McChesney waited for one small moment. Then:
“Cut out the bank president stuff, Mary Cutting, and make a fuss over me,” she commanded.
The pink-cheeked, white-haired woman looked up. You saw that her eyes were wonderfully young. She made three marks on a piece of paper, pushed a call-button at her desk, rose, and hugged Emma McChesney thoroughly and satisfactorily, then held her off a moment and demanded to know where she had bought her hat.
“Got it ten minutes ago, in the millinery department downstairs. Had to. If I’d have come into New York after five months’ exile like this I’d probably have bought a brocade and fur-edged evening wrap, to relieve this feeling of wild joy. For five months I’ve spent my evenings in my hotel room, or watching the Maude Byrnes Stock Company playing “Lena Rivers,” with the ingenue coming out between the acts in a calico apron and a pink sunbonnet and doing a thing they bill as vaudeville. I’m dying to see a real show–a smart one that hasn’t run two hundred nights on Broadway–one with pretty girls, and pink tights, and a lot of moonrises, and sunsets and things, and a prima donna in a dress so stunning that all the women in the audience are busy copying it so they can describe it to their home-dressmaker next day.”
“Poor, poor child,” said Mary Cutting, “I don’t seem to recall any such show.”
“Well, it will look that way to me, anyway,” said Emma McChesney. “I’ve wired Jock to meet me to-morrow, and I’m going to give the child a really sizzling little vacation. But to-night you and I will have an old-girl frolic. We’ll have dinner together somewhere downtown, and then we’ll go to the theater, and after that I’m coming out to that blessed flat of yours and sleep between real sheets. We’ll have some sandwiches and beer and other things out of the ice-box, and then we’ll have a bathroom bee. We’ll let down our back hair, and slap cold cream around, and tell our hearts’ secrets and use up all the hot water. Lordy! It will be a luxury to have a bath in a tub that doesn’t make you feel as though you wanted to scrub it out with lye and carbolic. Come on, Mary Cutting.”
Mary Cutting’s pink cheeks dimpled like a girl’s.
“You’ll never grow up, Emma McChesney–at least, I hope you never will. Sit there in the corner and be a good child, and I’ll be ready for you in ten minutes.”
Peace settled down on the tiny office. Emma McChesney, there in her corner, surveyed the little room with entire approval. It breathed of things restful, wholesome, comforting. There was a bowl of sweet peas on the desk; there was an Indian sweet grass basket filled with autumn leaves in the corner; there was an air of orderliness and good taste; and there was the pink-cheeked, white-haired woman at the desk.
“There!” said Mary Cutting, at last. She removed her glasses, snapped them up on a little spring-chain near her shoulder, sat back, and smiled upon Emma McChesney.
Emma McChesney smiled back at her
. Theirs was not a talking friendship. It was a thing of depth and understanding, like the friendship between two men.
They sat looking into each other’s eyes, and down beyond, where the soul holds forth. And because what each saw there was beautiful and sightly they were seized with a shyness such as two men feel when they love each other, and so they awkwardly endeavored to cover up their shyness with words.