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“That’s enough for the present,” answered Emma McChesney, briskly. “Well, now, suppose we talk machinery and girls, and cutters for a while.”

Two months later found T. A. Buck and his sales-manager, both shirt- sleeved, both smoking nervously, as they marked, ticketed, folded, arranged. They were getting out the travelers’ spring lines. Entered Mrs. McChesney, and stood eying them, worriedly. It was her dozenth visit to the stock-room that morning. A strange restlessness seemed to trouble her. She wandered from office to show-room, from show-room to factory.

“What’s the trouble?” inquired T. A. Buck, squinting up at her through a cloud of cigar smoke.

“Oh, nothing,” answered Mrs. McChesney, and stood fingering the piles of glistening satin garments, a queer, faraway look in her eyes. Then she turned and walked listlessly toward the door. There she encountered Spalding–Billy Spalding, of the coveted Middle-Western territory, Billy Spalding, the long-headed, quick-thinking; Spalding, the persuasive, Spalding the mixer, Spalding on whom depended the fate of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Knickerbocker and Pajama.

“‘Morning! When do you start out?” she asked him.

“In the morning. Gad, that’s some line, what? I’m itching to spread it. You’re certainly a wonder-child, Mrs. McChesney. Why, the boys–“

Emma McChesney sighed, somberly. “That line does sort of–well, tug at your heart-strings, doesn’t it?” She smiled, almost wistfully. “Say, Billy, when you reach the Eagle House at Waterloo, tell Annie, the head-waitress to rustle you a couple of Mrs. Traudt’s dill pickles. Tell her Mrs. McChesney asked you to. Mrs. Traudt, the proprietor’s wife, doles ’em out to her favorites. They’re crisp, you know, and firm, and juicy, and cold, and briny.”

Spalding drew a sibilant breath. “I’ll be there!” he grinned. “I’ll be there!”

But he wasn’t. At eight the next morning there burst upon Mrs. McChesney a distraught T. A. Buck.

“Hear about Spalding?” he demanded.

“Spalding? No.”

“His wife ‘phoned from St. Luke’s. Taken with an appendicitis attack at midnight. They operated at five this morning. One of those had-it- been-twenty-four-hours-later-etc. operations. That settles us.”

“Poor kid,” replied Emma McChesney. “Rough on him and his brand-new wife.”

“Poor kid! Yes. But how about his territory? How about our new line? How about–“

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Emma McChesney, cheerfully.

“I’d like to know how! We haven’t a man equal to the territory. He’s our one best bet.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Mrs. McChesney again, smoothly.

A little impatient exclamation broke from T. A. Buck. At that Emma McChesney smiled. Her new listlessness and abstraction seemed to drop from her. She braced her shoulders, and smiled her old sunny, heartening smile.

“I’m going out with that line. I’m going to leave a trail of pajamas and knickerbockers from Duluth to Canton.”

“You! No, you won’t!” A dull, painful red had swept into T. A. Buck’s face. It was answered by a flood of scarlet in Mrs. McChesney’s countenance.

“I don’t get you,” she said. “I’m afraid you don’t realize what this trip means. It’s going to be a fight. They’ll have to be coaxed and bullied and cajoled, and reasoned with. It’s going to be a ‘show-me’ trip.”

T. A. Buck took a quick step forward. “That’s just why. I won’t have you fighting with buyers, taking their insults, kowtowing to them, salving them. It–it isn’t woman’s work.”

Emma McChesney was sorting the contents of her desk with quick, nervous fingers. “I’ll. get the Twentieth Century,” she said, over her shoulder. “Don’t argue, please. If it’s no work for a woman then I suppose it follows that I’m unwomanly. For ten years I traveled this country selling T. A. Buck’s Featherloom Petticoats. My first trip on the road I was in the twenties–and pretty, too. I’m a woman of thirty-seven now. I’ll never forget that first trip–the heartbreaks, the insults I endured, the disappointments, the humiliation, until they understood that I meant business–strictly business. I’m tired of hearing you men say that this and that and the other isn’t woman’s work. Any work is woman’s work that a woman can do well. I’ve given the ten best years of my life to this firm. Next to my boy at school it’s the biggest thing in my life. Sometimes it swamps even him. Don’t come to me with that sort of talk.” She was locking drawers, searching pigeon-holes, skimming files. “This is my busy day.” She arose, and shut her desk with a bang, locked it, and turned a flushed and beaming face toward T. A. Buck, as he stood frowning before her.