"To save Ed Meyers's tender feelings! You don't know him. Fat Ed Meyers could be courtmartialed, tried, convicted, and publicly disgraced, with his epaulets torn off, and his sword broken, and likely as not he'd stoop down, pick up a splinter of steel to use as a toothpick, and Castlewalk down the aisle to the tune with which they were drumming him out of the regiment. Stay right here. Meyers's explanation ought to be at least amusing, if not educating."

In the corridor outside could be heard some one blithely humming in the throaty tenor of the fat man. The humming ceased with a last high note as the door opened and there entered Fat Ed Meyers, rosy, cherubic, smiling, his huge frame looming mountainous in the rippling folds of a loose-hung London plaid topcoat.

"Greetings!" boomed this cheery vision, raising one hand, palm outward, in mystic salute. He beamed upon the frowning Jock.

"How's the infant prodigy!" The fact that Jock's frown deepened to a scowl ruffled him not at all. "And what," went on he, crossing his feet and leaning negligently against Mrs. McChesney's desk, "and what can I do for thee, fair lady?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Greetings!'"]

"For me?" said Emma McChesney, looking up at him through narrowed eyelids. "I'll tell you what. You can explain to me, in what they call a few well-chosen words, just how you, or any other living creature, could manage to turn in an expense account like that on a six-weeks' missionary trip through the Middle West."

"Dear lady,"--in the bland tones that one uses to an unreasonable child,--"you will need no explanation if you will just remember to lay the stress on the word missionary. I went forth through the Middle West to spread the light among the benighted skirt trade.

This wasn't a selling trip, dear lady. It was a buying expedition.

And I had to buy, didn't I? all the way from Michigan to Indiana."

He smiled down at her, calm, self-a.s.sured, impudent. A little flush grew in Emma McChesney's cheeks.

"I've always said," she began, crisply, "that one could pretty well judge a man's character, temperament, morals, and physical make-up by just glancing at his expense account. The trouble with you is that you haven't learned the art of spending money wisely.

It isn't always the man with the largest expense sheet that gets the most business. And it isn't the man who leaves the greatest number of circles on the table top in his hotel room, either."

She paused a moment. Ed Meyers's smile had lost some of its heartiness. "Mr. Buck's out of town, as you know. He'll be back next week. He wasn't in favor of--"

"Now, Mrs. McChesney," interrupted Ed Meyers nervously, "you know there's always one live one in every firm, just like there's always one star in every family. You're the--"

"I'm the one who wants to know how you could spend sixty-nine dollars for two days' incidentals in Iowa. Iowa! Why, look here, Ed Meyers, I made Iowa for ten years when I was on the road. You know that. And you know, and I know, that in order to spend sixty-nine dollars for incidentals in two days in Iowa you have to call out the militia."

"Not when you're trying to win the love of every skirt buyer from Sioux City to Des Moines."

Emma McChesney rose impatiently. "Oh, that's nonsense! You don't need to do that these days. Those are old-fashioned methods.

They're out of date. They--"

At that a little sound came from Jock. Emma heard it, glanced at him, turned away again in confusion.

"I was foolish enough in the first place to give you this job for old times' sake," she continued hurriedly.

Fat Ed Meyers' face drooped dolefully. He c.o.c.ked his round head on one side fatuously. "For old times' sake," he repeated, with tremulous pathos, and heaved a gusty sigh.

"Which goes to show that I need a guardian," finished Emma McChesney cruelly. "The only old times that I can remember are when I was selling Featherlooms, and you were out for the Sans-Silk Skirt Company, both covering the same territory, and both running a year-around race to see which could beat the other at his own game. The only difference was that I always played fair, while you played low-down whenever you had a chance."

"Now, my dear Mrs. McChesney--"

"That'll be all," said Emma McChesney, as one whose patience is fast slipping away. "Mr. Buck will see you next week." Then, turning to her son as the door closed on the drooping figure of the erstwhile buoyant Meyers, "Where'll we lunch, Jock?"

"Mother," Jock broke out hotly, "why in the name of all that's foolish do you persist in using the methods of Methuselah! People don't sell goods any more by sending out fat old ex-traveling men to jolly up the trade."

"Jock," repeated Emma McChesney slowly, "where--shall--we--lunch?"

It was a grim little meal, eaten almost in silence. Emma McChesney had made it a rule to use luncheon time as a recess. She played mental tag and hop-scotch, so that, returning to her office refreshed in mind and body, she could attack the afternoon's work with new vigor. And never did she talk or think business.

To-day she ate her luncheon with a forced appet.i.te, glanced about with a listlessness far removed from her usual alert interest, and followed Jock's attempts at conversation with a polite effort that was more insulting than downright inattention.

"Dessert, Mother?" Jock had to say it twice before she heard.

"What? Oh, no--I think not."

The waiter hesitated, coughed discreetly, lifted his eyebrows insinuatingly. "The French pastry's particularly nice to-day, madam. If you'd care to try something? Eclair, madam--peach tart--mocha tart--caramel--"

Emma McChesney smiled. "It does sound tempting." She glanced at Jock. "And we're wearing our gowns so floppy this year that it makes no difference whether one's fat or not." She turned to the waiter. "I never can tell till I see them. Bring your pastry tray, will you?"

Jock McChesney's finger and thumb came together with a snap. He leaned across the table toward his mother, eyes glowing, lips parted and eager. "There! you've proved my point."

"Point?"

"About advertising. No, don't stop me. Don't you see that what applies to pastry applies to petticoats? You didn't think of French pastry until he suggested it to you--advertised it, really.

And then you wanted a picture of them. You wanted to know what they looked like before buying. That's all there is to advertising. Telling people about a thing, making 'em want it, and showing 'em how it will look when they have it. Get me?"

Emma McChesney was gazing at Jock with a curious, fascinated stare. It was a blank little look, such as we sometimes wear when the mind is working furiously. If the insinuating waiter, presenting the laden tray for her inspection, was startled by the rapt expression which she turned upon the cunningly wrought wares, he was too much a waiter to show it.

A pause. "That one," said Mrs. McChesney, pointing to the least ornate. She ate it, down to the last crumb, in a silence that was pregnant with portent. She put down her fork and sat back.

"Jock, you win. I--I suppose I have fallen out of step. Perhaps I've been too busy watching my own feet. T.A. will be back next week. Could your office have an advertising plan roughly sketched by that time?"

"Could they!" His tone was exultant. "Watch 'em! Hupp's been crazy to make Featherlooms famous."

"But look here, son. I want a hand in that copy. I know Featherlooms better than your Sam Hupp will ever--"

Jock shook his head. "They won't stand for that, Mother. It never works. The manufacturer always thinks he can write magic stuff because he knows his own product. But he never can. You see, he knows too much. That's it. No perspective."

"We'll see," said Emma McChesney curtly.

So it was that ten days later the first important conference in the interests of the Featherloom Petticoat Company's advertising campaign was called. But in those ten days of hurried preparation a little silent tragedy had come about. For the first time in her brave, sunny life Emma McChesney had lost faith in herself. And with such malicious humor does Fate work her will that she chose Sam Hupp's new dictagraph as the instrument with which to p.r.i.c.k the bubble of Mrs. McChesney's self-confidence.

Sam Hupp, one of the copy-writing marvels of the Berg, Shriner firm, had a trick of forgetting to shut off certain necessary currents when he paused in his dictation to throw in conversational asides. The old and experienced stenographers, had learned to look out for that, and to eliminate from their typewritten letters certain irrelevant and sometimes irreverent asides which Sam Hupp evidently had addressed to his pipe, or the office boy, and not intended for the tube of the all-devouring dictagraph.

There was a new and nervous little stenographer in the outer office, and she had not been warned of this.

"We think very highly of the plan you suggest," Sam Hupp had said into the dictagraph's mouthpiece. "In fact, in one of your valuable copy suggestions you--"

Without changing his tone he glanced over his shoulder at his colleague, Hopper, who was listening and approving.

"... Let the old girl think the idea is her own. She's virtually the head of that concern, and they've spoiled her. Successful, and used to being kowtowed to. Doesn't know her notions of copy are ten years behind the advertising game--"

And went on with his letter again. After which he left the office to play golf. And the little blond numbskull in the outer office dutifully took down what the instrument had to say, word for word, marked it, "Dictated, but not read," signed neat initials, and with a sigh went on with the rest of her sheaf of letters.

Emma McChesney read the letter next morning. She read it down to the end, and then again. The two readings were punctuated with a little gasp, such as we give when an icy douche is suddenly turned upon us. And that was all.

A week later an intent little group formed a ragged circle about the big table in the private office of Bartholomew Berg, head of the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company. Bartholomew Berg himself, ma.s.sive, watchful, taciturn, managing to give an impression of power by his very silence, sat at one side of the long table. Just across from him a sleek-haired stenographer bent over her note book, jotting down every word, that the conference might make business history. Hopper, at one end of the room, studied his shoe heel intently. He was unbelievably boyish looking to command the fabulous salary reported to be his. Advertising men, mentioning his name, pulled a figurative forelock as they did so. Near Mrs.

McChesney sat Sam Hupp, he of the lightning brain and the sure-fire copy. Emma McChesney, strangely silent, kept her eyes intent on the faces of the others. T.A. Buck, interested, enthusiastic, but somewhat uncertain, glanced now and then at his silent business partner, found no satisfaction in her set face, and glanced away again. Grace Galt, unbelievably young and pretty to have won a place for herself in that conference of business people, smiled in secret at Jock McChesney's evident struggle to conceal his elation at being present at this, his first staff meeting.

The conference had lasted one hour now. In that time Featherloom petticoats had been picked to pieces, bit by bit, from hem to waist-band. Nothing had been left untouched. Every angle had come under the keen vision of the advertising experts--the comfort of the garment, its durability, style, cheapness, service. Which to emphasize?