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Awaiting the pleasure of the agent, T. A. Buck, leaning upon his stick, looked about him appreciatively. “Makes the Knickerbocker lobby look like the waiting-room in an orphan asylum.”

“Don’t let ’em fool you,” answered Emma McChesney, sotto voce, just before the agent popped out of his office. “It’s all included in the rent. Dinky enough up-stairs. If ever I have guests that I want to impress I’ll entertain ’em in the hall.”

There approached them the agent, smiling, urbane, pleasing as to manner–but not too pleasing; urbanity mixed, so to speak, with the leaven of caution.

“Ah, yes! Mrs.–er–McChesney, wasn’t it? I can’t tell you how many parties have been teasing me for that apartment since you looked at it. I’ve had to–well–make myself positively unpleasant in order to hold it for you. You said you wished your son to–“

The glittering little jewel-box of an elevator was taking them higher and higher. The agent stared hard at T. A. Buck.

Mrs. McChesney followed his gaze. “My business associate, Mr. T. A. Buck,” she said grimly.

The agent discarded caution; he was all urbanity. Their floor attained, he unlocked the apartment door and threw it open with a gesture which was a miraculous mixture of royalty and generosity.

“He knows you!” hissed Emma McChesney, entering with T. A. “Another ten on the rent. “The agent pulled up a shade, switched on a light, straightened an electric globe. T. A. Buck looked about at the bare white walls, at the bare polished floor, at the severe fireplace.

“I knew it couldn’t last,” he said.

“If it did,” replied Emma McChesney good-naturedly, “I couldn’t afford to live here,” and disappeared into the kitchen followed by the agent, who babbled ever and anon of views, of Hudsons, of express-trains, of parks, as is the way of agents from Fiftieth Street to One Hundred and ‘Umpty-ninth.

T. A. Buck, feet spread wide, hands behind him, was left standing in the center of the empty living-room. He was leaning on his stick and gazing fixedly upward at the ornate chandelier. It was a handsome fixture, and boasted some of the most advanced ideas in modern lighting equipment. Yet it scarcely seemed to warrant the passionate scrutiny which T. A. Buck was bestowing upon it. So rapt was his gaze that when the telephone-bell shrilled unexpectedly in the hallway he started so that his stick slipped on the polished floor, and as Emma McChesney and the still voluble agent emerged from the kitchen the dignified head of the firm of T. A. Buck and Company presented an animated picture, one leg in the air, arms waving wildly, expression at once amazed and hurt.

Emma McChesney surveyed him wide-eyed. The agent, unruffled, continued to talk on his way to the telephone.

“It only looks small to you,” he was saying. “Fact is, most people think it’s too large. They object to a big kitchen. Too much work.” He gave his attention to the telephone.

Emma McChesney looked troubled. She stood in the doorway, head on one side, as one who conjures up a mental picture.

“Come here,” she commanded suddenly, addressing the startled T. A. “You nagged until I had to take you along. Here’s a chance to justify your coming. I want your opinion on the kitchen.”

“Kitchens,” announced T. A. Buck of the English clothes and the gardenia, “are my specialty,” and entered the domain of the gas-range and the sink.

Emma McChesney swept the infinitesimal room with a large gesture.

“Considering it as a kitchen, not as a locker, does it strike you as being adequate?”

T. A. Buck, standing in the center of the room, touched all four walls with his stick.

“I’ve heard,” he ventured, “that they’re–ah–using ’em small this year.”

Emma McChesney’s eyes took on a certain wistful expression. “Maybe. But whenever I’ve dreamed of a home, which was whenever I got lonesome on the road, which was every evening for ten years, I’d start to plan a kitchen. A kitchen where you could put up preserves, and a keg of dill pickles, and get a full-sized dinner without getting things more than just comfortably cluttered.”

T. A. Buck reflected. He flapped his arms as one who feels pressed for room. “With two people occupying the room, as at present, the presence of one dill pickle would sort of crowd things, not to speak of a keg of ’em, and the full-sized dinner, and the–er–preserves. Still–“