Even as men judge one another by a Masonic emblem, an Elk pin, or the
band of a cigar, so do women in sleeping-cars weigh each other
according to the rules of the Ancient Order of the Kimono. Seven
seconds after Emma McChesney first beheld the negligee that stood
revealed in the dim light she had its wearer neatly weighed, marked,
listed, docketed and placed.

It was the kind of kimono that is associated with straw-colored hair,
and French-heeled shoes, and over-fed dogs at the end of a leash. The
Japanese are wrongly accused of having perpetrated it. In pattern it
showed bright green flowers-that-never-were sprawling on a purple
background. A diamond bar fastened it not too near the throat.

It was one of Emma McChesney's boasts that she was the only living
woman who could get off a sleeper at Bay City, Michigan, at 5 A.M.,
without looking like a Swedish immigrant just dumped at Ellis Island.
Traveling had become a science with her, as witness her serviceable
dark-blue silk kimono, and her hair in a schoolgirl braid down her
back. The blonde woman cast upon Emma McChesney an admiring eye.

"Gawd, ain't it hot!" she said, sociably.

"I wonder," mused Emma McChesney, "if that porter could be hypnotized
into making some lemonade--a pitcherful, with a lot of ice in it, and
the cold sweat breaking out all over the glass?

"Lemonade!" echoed the other, wonder and amusement in her tone. "Are
they still usin' it?" She leaned against the door, swaying with the
motion of the car, and hugging her. plump, bare arms. "Travelin'
alone?" she asked.