smelled of straw, and mold, and stables, and dampness, and tobacco, as
'buses have from old Jonas Chuzzlewit's time to this. Nine years on
the road had accustomed Emma McChesney's nostrils to 'bus smells. She
gazed stolidly out of the window, crossed one leg over the other,
remembered that her snug suit-skirt wasn't built for that attitude,
uncrossed them again, and caught the delighted and understanding eye
of the fat traveling man, who was a symphony in brown--brown suit,
brown oxfords, brown scarf, brown bat, brown-bordered handkerchief
just peeping over the edge of his pocket. He looked like a colossal
chocolate fudge.

"Red-faced, grinning, and a naughty wink--I'll bet he sells coffins
and undertakers' supplies," mused Emma McChesney. "And the other one--
the tall, lank, funereal affair in black--I suppose his line would be
sheet music, or maybe phonographs. Or perhaps he's a lyceum bureau
reader, scheduled to give an evening of humorous readings for the
Young Men's Sunday Evening Club course at the First M. E. Church."

During those nine years on the road for the Featherloom Skirt Company
Emma McChesney had picked up a side line or two on human nature.

She was not surprised to see the fat man in brown and the thin man in
black leap out of the 'bus and into the hotel before she had had time
to straighten her hat after the wheels had bumped up against the
curbing. By the time she reached the desk the two were disappearing in
the wake of a bell-boy.

The sartorial triumph behind the desk, languidly read her signature
upside down, took a disinterested look at her, and yelled: