At a rosewood desk in a tiny cozy office sat a pink-cheeked, white-
haired woman. You associated her in your mind with black velvet and
real lace. She did not look up as Emma McChesney entered. Emma
McChesney waited for one small moment. Then:

"Cut out the bank president stuff, Mary Cutting, and make a fuss over
me," she commanded.

The pink-cheeked, white-haired woman looked up. You saw that her eyes
were wonderfully young. She made three marks on a piece of paper,
pushed a call-button at her desk, rose, and hugged Emma McChesney
thoroughly and satisfactorily, then held her off a moment and demanded
to know where she had bought her hat.

"Got it ten minutes ago, in the millinery department downstairs. Had
to. If I'd have come into New York after five months' exile like this
I'd probably have bought a brocade and fur-edged evening wrap, to
relieve this feeling of wild joy. For five months I've spent my
evenings in my hotel room, or watching the Maude Byrnes Stock Company
playing "Lena Rivers," with the ingenue coming out between the acts in
a calico apron and a pink sunbonnet and doing a thing they bill as
vaudeville. I'm dying to see a real show--a smart one that hasn't run
two hundred nights on Broadway--one with pretty girls, and pink
tights, and a lot of moonrises, and sunsets and things, and a prima
donna in a dress so stunning that all the women in the audience are
busy copying it so they can describe it to their home-dressmaker next
day."

"Poor, poor child," said Mary Cutting, "I don't seem to recall any