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