"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!"